


Alien Space Fever

by YesVirginia



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Biology, Growing Pains, M/M, Multi, Synaesthesia, hornjobs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-27 06:21:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YesVirginia/pseuds/YesVirginia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Troll growth cycles are a miracle of nature. That is, they occur spontaneously and are a potential danger to the life and nerves of all involved. Dave learns about this and about the phenomena of the ravenous lisping werebeast the hard way(there is no easy way), and Sollux experiences the power of mashups.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. What the hell is going on

**Author's Note:**

> [Kink meme fill, but safe for work as of now. The rating will quite probably change in the future.]

He knows it as soon as he wakes up. When he digs his head out from underneath his pillow, his mouth dry from the human sleeping pills that manage to hold the night terrors at bay, it hits Sollux right between the eyes before he's even properly awake. He lies there on the futon, arms and legs hanging over the sides, and sighs into the mound of blankets. His skin feels cold, the chill going right to his bones, and his muscles hurt dull and pounding. The beginning of a vicious migraine threatens around the edges of his head. Sollux groans and rolls over on his back. “Fuck thith, fuck it right up the ath,” he informs the ceiling.

A bottle of red powerade crosses the air right above his head and smacks into the wall next to the futon. It bounces off and rolls across the floor, ending up right next to his hand. Sollux drags the pillow over his eyes for protection two seconds before the blue counterpart bottle is lobbed right after it. When there's no more airborne beverages to watch out for, he gropes around blindy and grabs the first bottle. He is the thirstiest he's ever been in his life, and he sucks down half of the contents without even opening his eyes.

“I dunno. It's a little early for assfucking, at least for human standards. That kind of stuff's reserved for Sunday mornings, don't you know that? Today's Saturday. Jeez, Captor, learn the rules.”

Sollux sits up with grueling slowness and runs a hand through his hair. He's been sweating like hell, but he feels ice cold. “Fuck you, Thtrider. Good morning.” He even makes the effort to contort his face into a smile, but it probably just looks sick.

Dave slinks over to the futon in that special pretend-disinterested walk of his, and crouches down next to him with a fluidity that betrays his martial arts training. It's ten in the goddamn morning and that douchebag is wearing his shades. Sollux gropes for his own, and there's a moment of total disorientation when he puts them on the wrong way around.

“I mean, man, I've heard about people not knowing if it's asshole or breakfast time when their head's not screwed on right, but personally, I'm all for pancakes first. You can commence with the assfucking when I've had my fix of fake maple syrup.”

He misses by a foot when he tries to punch Dave in the shoulder, and almost falls over from trying to swing his fist in the first place. “It's a figure of fucking thpeech, you prick. I'm the one being thcrewed here, and my metabolithm'th doing the pounding. _Ugh_.”

“You know, for the way you and Vantas always gripe on about how your weird troll bodies are so inherently fucking superior to us pink sacks of water, you're sure a delicate little kitten.” He stands up and practically saunters over to the kitchenette.  
Sollux has every intention to get up and stick him into the fridge upside down, or at the very least smack him on the ass so hard he'll feel it backwards in time. He only gets as far as one leg before the world gives an uncomfortable sideways tilt, his head pounds with pain and the leg collapses under him again.

“Fuck.” Sollux says, his face smashed into the mattress. He props himself up on his arms and retrieves his anaglyph shades from the floor.

Dave returns with a box of Lucky Charms tucked under his arm like a ragdoll. He picks out a handful of marshmallows, crams them into his mouth, and raises his eyebrows.

“Mph. So what's the emergency? Alien space fever? Common cold? Do I have to call the Men in Black or just tenderly feed you chicken soup?”

“Chicken thoup.” Sollux echoes. He finally manages to get his feet under him, and isn't too proud to take an iron grip on Dave's shirtfront to drag himself up. He is feeling honestly pathetic. “ _Chicken thoup?_ ” He drags the blanket up along with him – it's one of Dave's which means it has some sort of monstrously big-eyed animals in pastel on it – and more or less crashes at the table. He doesn't even flinch when Dave starts patting his hair.

“Yeah, chicken soup. That's what humans cook for their poor little darlings when they're feeling unwell.” Dave's thumb scritches over the hairline at the back of his neck, and Sollux breathes out a purr at that. This isn't ironic head-patting, then.

Sollux hunches his shoulders forward and wraps the hideous blanket tighter around himself. The time window that would have allowed him to go no-dude-stop-hands-off and slap Dave's fingers away closed about half a minute ago. The worst part is that he doesn't even mind. There is pretty much no way this will not eventually lead to the king of douchebags ironically calling him a cute little alien kitten. Sollux hates it when that happens. He's convinced the asshole is just jealous that he has only one method of vocalization.

Right now he can not bring himself to give a fuck about all this annoying pet name fuckery. He actually tilts his head back into the scratching fingers and for a moment he can articulate himself even worse than usual, because he's purring so hard his tongue is vibrating between his teeth. Then he manages, “Fuck you and fuck your chicken thoup. I'm not an ill girl in one of your thtupid little human earth thitcomth.”

Dave's stupid satisfied look that's not quite a smile because he's too cool to smile is almost audible. He drags his fingernails over Sollux's scalp, scratches him behind the horns like he's scratching a cat behind the ears. Then his palm is flat against Sollux's forehead suddenly.

“Fuck, dude, this really is alien space fever we're dealing with here. You're burning up, I could just about fry my pancakes on your bony ass. Gonna call some scientists up who'll draw a vial of your blood and squint at it all concerned-like in a microscope. How big is the chance you'll turn into a ravenous lisping werebeast and start eating raw meat and ripping people's heads off?”

Sollux slaps the hand away from his forehead and gets his his throat back under control. “At thith point I'd thay fifty perthent. But theriouthly, Thh- _Strider_ , shut your gaping fathe hole and lithten for like two goddamn minuteth.”

Strider shuts all of his face, and sits down across from Sollux, Lucky Charms still on his lap. He digs out a few more marshmallows and throws one at Sollux. It bounces off his forehead. Sollux intends to toss it right back and stick it up his nose, using his psionics because no way is he going to move his arms even an inch if he doesn't have to. But as soon as he tries to pick the thing up, his head explodes with pain and the psionics crackle and pop. The marshmallow melts into a puddle on the table. Dave's nearly translucent eyebrows slowly rise over the rim of his shades.

“Okay.” Sollux says, “tho now that I have your attention, here'th the deal. Thith ith not a thickneth, it'th a biological function. We call it a shift. Shit'th gonna be crathy for a while, and you're gonna be privy to my thuffering. Thound cool?”

“Like a cold storage warehouse, man. So what does it do?” His lip gives that sly little twitch that is his interpretation of a smile, and he offers the box of cereal to Sollux.

“I mean, not that I'm not a dedicated student of weird alien biology. Look at me here, spending time inbetween classes on my knees to secure my straight A's in the study of skinny-ass grey extraterrestials. But I have no fucking clue what is even a shift, so clue me in, teacher man.”

Despite himself, Sollux snorts in laughter. His head is still throbbing, and he could use a soda or a dozen. “Watch out tho I don't thpank you with a ruler for talking in clath. Layman'th termth, it meanth that I trade out thith underthithed body for a bigger one. Not bodyhopping thtyle, tho calm your titth. But if I'm lucky I'll grow five incheth.” He flashes a fangy grin at Dave's not-quite-so-cool expression, and amends, “In height, that ith.”

“Shit, man. And here I thought you'd stay a shrimp for all eternity. Where do I figure in this?”

“You can make yourthelf utheful and get me thome milk. I'll need the nutrientth.”

Dave stands up and nods, “Done. Dude I swear, you're becoming a kitten more and more every day.”

Bingo. Sollux laughs again, but weaker than before. He really needs something to drink before he falls flat on his face. Which is a distinct possibility, he thinks muzzily, before everything goes blurry and the next thing he knows is that he's face-down on the table and Dave is patting his face, looking almost but not quite totally not worried.

 

Dave will not put up with any sort of shit. He will especially not put up with shit from somebody who just abruptly introduced his face to the table while his back was turned for half a minute. His absolute determination not to take any shit is thwarted a little when Sollux suddenly starts, makes a confused snarly noise and starts fighting tooth and nail against being dragged over to the couch. Literally, with his claw-tipped hands flailing all over the place and his freaky-cool fangs flashing like he's planning to really use them, which kind of isn't cool at all.

“Hey fuck, Captor, calm the hell down!” Dave tries to heave him across the floor, wondering what the fuck went wrong here and why the hell they are suddenly strifing when all he wanted to do was deposit him on the couch so his stupid ass wouldn't fall off the chair sideways.

Sollux flashes him a look that's equal parts vicious and completely confused and tries to thrash out of his arms. Dave can take him in a fight no problem if he doesn't use his creepy mindpowers, at least most of the time, but right now it isn't looking so good. It's like trying to carry a running blender bridal-style, all sharp nails and arms whipping around, and Dave gets an elbow that is so sharp it could probably shank someone in the ribs before he stumbles over backwards and drags Sollux along with himself. They sort of sit down hard but mostly just crash on the floor

Sollux immediately deflates. All the air and fight in him seem to get exhaled in one massive sigh, and he collapses halfway across Dave's lap and halfway on the floor. His eyes look the size of plates and there's a really creepy glow around their edges, and he stares up in Dave's direction but not _at_ him for a long moment. Then the focus snaps back into his face all at once and he sits up like a jack-in-the-box, so rapidly that their foreheads almost crash together.

“Thorry. Fuck. _Fuck_ , thorry,” he blurts, and then his bony fingers are on his temples suddenly, squeezing like he's scared his head will fall apart if he doesn't hold it together.

Dave reaches up and adjusts his shades before they fall off his face entirely. There are little sparks crackling in Sollux's hair, and that is definitely what he has learned to recognize as a Bad Omen. “What the fuck just happened?” he asks,

“I pathed out, and then I wath awake but not really, and _you were thuddenly dragging me off my chair what the fuck_ but I shouldn't have freaked like thith fuck I'm thorry I really need to eat thomething.” All of that comes out on one single breath, and so fast that he bites his tongue on the last word. Dave can always tell when that happens, because when it does, Sollux fucks the sibilant up even more and spits a little, and then he cringes because biting your tongue with these killer fangs really hurts. His oh-fuck expression is one that Dave is pretty familiar with.

“That another symptom of your transformation sequence?” he asks, and shifts Sollux's skinny legs off of his own so he can get the milk off the counter.

“That'th pretty much it, fuck, that'll blow over in a few dayth," There's an odd assortment of expressions fending for room on Sollux's face, from apologetic to a kind of thinly-veiled frustration and back and a strange mixture of the two. When Dave offers him the milk, all of that shifts to something surprisingly grateful. The ironic nursery blanket is still tangled around one of his ankles, and he pauses to drag it up and throw it across his shoulders before he tears the spout right off the milk carton.

Dave stares.

Sollux tilts his head back and starts to swallow and nope that doesn't look dirty at all. Actually, it doesn't. It mostly looks creepy. His throat works and there's milk spilling down his chin, and then it's spilling down his shirt and he just keeps chugging it like it's a 40 and he's determined to forget his troubles all in one go.

For a very brief moment Dave is reminded of that one scene in Batman Returns, but he banishes that thought from his headspace before it can get any more screwed up.

Sollux discards the empty carton and draws the soggy blanket up to his chin. “I wath thirsty,” he manages, and then, “I hate thith.”

After a legendary amount of fussing, Dave manages to convince Sollux to install his narrow arse on the couch. He even fetches a warmer blanket, because despite his yellow-flushed cheeks, Sollux is shivering violently. Whatever it is that his body is doing should be enough to render anyone monosyllabic, but he can not seem to shut up. He keeps running his mouth off, trying to explain, but he keeps verbally getting lost in the culture gap and tries to dig his way out with more and more convoluted metaphors. Dave keeps up a constant repartee of “yeah”, “fuck, man, really?” and “so that means that you'll grow a tentacle beard like Davy Jones, right?”.  
Sollux pronounces him insane and demands more milk.

His eyes go all narrow when he laughs like that, it makes him look kind of Asian, but mostly he doesn't look human at all. It isn't just the horns. It isn't even _mostly_ the horns. It's the way the bones of his face are put together, it's his sharp chin and cheekbones and the wide forehead that just come together to look _weird_. Dave is really oddly glad that the game interpreted their cheat the way it did, that it didn't change the trolls' species when they tricked it into making Earth receive them benignly.

He pretends not to notice the differences too much, but he has the sneaking suspicion that Sollux sees right through him, which obligates him to make a few more stupid jokes to cover himself up. Those eyes can look right through a foot of solid steel, at least they look like they could, and no amount of “That'th not how clairvoyanthe workth, shithead,” will convince him otherwise. It's hard to tell if Sollux is even looking at him.

Right now he's sure that he is, because he's is doing that thing where he contorts his eyebrows halfway off his face and pulls his lip up to display one needle-like fang. This means _what the fuck, Thtrider,_ in huge neon letters. This is because Dave has shoved an old-ass videotape from his collection of anachronistic movie shit into an equally antiquated VCR. A sixties-tastic jingle starts playing, and Sollux makes a big show of cringing overdramatically. He has a milk mustache.

Dave has to grit his teeth together to keep from laughing. He somehow fails to mention it. Instead, he sets the remote down out of Sollux's reach, who looks like he won't do a lot of walking around today.

“Do me a favour and don't blow anything up. I have this thing where I kinda dislike remotes that are molten like a cheese sandwich.”

Sollux flips him a double bird. They both know that he has a massive boner for those old black-and-white shows, but for some reason he'd eat his own feet rather than admitting it. He'll stay glued to the screen and Dave is going to have a hard time not offering him popcorn. Actually, Sollux thinks popcorn is gross and only good for throwing at the guy who so magnanimously offered you some in the first place. He's practically got a ph.D in biting the hand that feeds him.

“I think I can manage to leave _half_ of the wallth thtanding. Now you do me a favour and methage KK –”

“Hold on,” Dave interrupts him, “is there a reason for me to message the automatic rage machine, or are you just a sadist, because no way am I writing anything to that guy without a solid gold justification. You know what a fucking little priss he is.”

“Thtrider,” Sollux says, but half his attention is on the screen, “Dave. You _know_ that I'm a thaditht. Tho not the point. KK kind of hath to know that I'm thtarting to shift. He'll be dithappointed if he doethn't know it firtht. Jutht imagine hith thad little fathe. That'th all the juthtification you're going to get, and you can jutht thuck on it.”

“Yeah, okay, I'll brave the rage of mommy Karkles, but you'd better pay me back for the effort and nerves of iron that's going to cost me.”

Sollux doesn't even grace him with an answer, he just flops down onto the pillow and burrows himself into the blankets. Dave is already halfway to his room when Sollux calls him back, yammering for his phone. “I'm telling AA and FF,” he explains, and he looks so much younger than his age and so tired and worn that Dave doesn't even complain that he gets to talk to people who aren't raging half-pints.


	2. Sorry for you

  


\--

  


hey vantas  
vant-ass  
hey  
fuck man stop sucking dick for just a sec and answer me  
spare me a goddamn minute the dicks can wait  
put a tea cozy on em to keep em warm  
seriously are you even still alive over there or did you just curl up in a ditch and die  
speaking to the ghost of karkles please leave a message after the fuck you

  


WHAT.  
WHY.  
STRIDER, I SWEAR IF YOU DO NOT STATE YOUR FUCKING PURPOSE I AM GOING TO GRIND YOU INTO PASTE.  
YOU HAVE EXACTLY FIVE SECONDS TO EXPLAIN WHY YOUR ASSFROTH IS CLOGGING UP MY INBOX.  
THE COUNTDOWN STARTS NOW.

captor

CAPTOR WHAT.  
IS THAT A STATEMENT OR A PLEA FOR HELP.  
DID HE SET THE HOUSE ON FIRE?

not this time

OH, UNDERSTANDING JUST HIT ME WITH THE FORCE OF A SLEDGEHAMMER TO MY BRAINSHIELD.  
HAVE YOU FINALLY TIED YOUR WORTHLESS WRISTS TOGETHER WITH CABLE BINDERS OR HOWEVER YOUR STUPID HUMAN 'GETTING HITCHED' WORKS?  
CONGRATULATIONS. IT WAS ABOUT FUCKING TIME. YOU HAVE ALL OF MY BLESSINGS.  
YOUR STUPID ASSHOLE FACTORS GET ADDED TOGETHER AND MULTIPLIED BY TWO.

no jeez man zip your trap for a moment and listen  
much as i love the way you talk out of your ass thats not it

NO. FUCK YOU.  
FUCK YOUR PEERS AND FUCK YOUR ENTIRE GALAXY WITH THE FURY OF A THOUSAND VIOLENTLY ERUPTING DRAGON DICKS (YES, I WENT THERE).  
I WILL NOT ENDURE ANOTHER SENSELESS CONVERSATION WHERE YOU ARE NEEDLESSLY AND, IT MUST BE SAID, FUCKING TRANSPARENTLY CAGEY ABOUT THE FACT THAT YOU SLEEP WITH SOLLUX'S SKINNY ASS TUCKED TENDERLY INTO YOUR CHEST LIKE A GODDAMN STUFFED ANIMAL.  
I KNOW YOU TWO ARE FUCKING.  
THE ENTIRE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE OF THIS RIDICULOUS PLANET KNOWS THAT YOU'RE FUCKING.

are you deaf or are you just celebrating an alien holiday called stupid day that i was tragically uninformed about  
there is no cagey here  
the cagey is really far away  
its so far away its doing a tropical safari in the antarctic thats how far away it is  
of course im fucking him  
hes fucking me  
i wasnt aware that it was ever a secret  
every wednesday i doll captor up in pretty stockings and livestream two hours of me spanking him  
not the goddamn point  
the point is that hes going through this thing  
alien space fever  
a shitfit  
no wait a shift thats what its called  
whatever it means i guess that hes kinda not able to come over to your place for brohugs or bulgebumps or whatever you guys actually do when noones watching  
paint each others toenails  
giggle about boys  
hey earth to dickwad  
dickwad are you still here  
did you go back to taking out your sexual frustrations on a piece of wood

 **\--  
**

Karkat does that thing where he gets so frustrated in the middle of a conversation that he'll get up from his computer and literally scream into a pillow until he's calmed down. Dave only knows that because Sollux told him, and the mental image is just too good. If there was ever a guy in need of a chill pill the size of Jupiter, this is him. Maybe he's taking a few minutes to express his incandescent anger through music, or he's ran off to his juggalo bff to cling to his figurative -- or literal, Dave wouldn't even be surprised -- apron for a bit.

Dave makes use of the silence to stick his head into the living room. Sollux somehow manages to take up most of the couch despite being smaller than it, completely engrossed with the show. Dave watches him watching for a minute, biting his lip at the running commentary that is a normal feature of Sollux Captor watching anything. After a viciously-delivered "Nononono, that guy'th bad newth, why don't humanth realithe their movie bad guyth are visually coded with facial hair and dumb hatth," Dave steps back from the doorway to go see if his inbox is dripping with curses courtesy of one Karkles Vantas.

As it turns out, it's dripping mostly with keysmashing.

\--

AJSDKHJKLKAD:F;;;;  
WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE ASSHOLE'S SHIFTING  
HE'S NOT EVEN NINE YET  
I AM GOING TO KILL HIM  
HE WILL DIE A SLOW, PAINFUL AND HUMILIATING DEATH FOR BEING A PREMATURE DICKGOBBLER.  
AND I AM GOING TO MAKE YOU WATCH.  
EXCUSE ME WHILE I PRY OUT MY EYES WITH AN ICE CREAM SCOOP AND RINSE THEM WITH VODKA.  
NO SANE UNIVERSE IS READY FOR THE UNHOLY CHUNKS IN YOUR WORD-VOMIT.  
YOU JUST DOOMED ALL OF  
NO.  
FUCK.  
NO JOKES ABOUT THAT SHIT.

there there  
have a cup of tea or something  
stop freaking  
i was kidding  
about the livestream part  
now tell me if we are cool

STRIDER.  
YOU CAN'T SEE IT, BUT I JUST TOOK A VERY DEEP BREATH.  
YOU ARE GOING TO TAKE CARE OF THE ASSLICKER YOU COHABITATE WITH, OR ELSE YOU ARE LITERALLY DEAD. AGAIN.  
DID THAT COME THROUGH?

loud and clear  
and dude thats done  
im already in a nurse outfit over here  
click 4 pix  
k ill just go back to feeding him like a baby bird that fell out of its nest  
except ive got cheetos instead of bugs and shit  
and im not puking them up  
and im a sexy nurse not a feathery douchebag  
well maybe im both  
anyways we got a truce here man  
working towards a common goal  
making sure the lisping nerdwonder gets through his alien shitfuckery all right

YES, EXCELLENT, LET'S STICK OUR THUMBS UP OUR ASSES AND CALL IT A TRUCE.  
AND IT'S NOT A 'PIECE OF WOOD', YOU ARROGANT BUTTONMASHER.

aw man dont hate on the button mashing  
ive been trained to do that since i could walk straight

EXCUSE ME, I WASN'T AWARE THAT I WAS LEGALLY OBLIGED TO LIKE THE BLEEPY STUFF. IT SOUNDS LIKE A BROKEN TRANSMITTER TO ME.

vantas youve got the memory of a goldfish  
truce you dig  
that means no namecalling  
and sides sollux likes the bleepy stuff  
makes his kokoro go doki doki  
k ill pull my head out of my ass first how about that  
the last track you sent over didnt suck  
like at all  
it was pretty goddamn sweet actually

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU JUST SAID.  
BUT OKAY FUCK FINE HERE HAVE A PAIL FULL OF 'THANK YOU', YOU CAN UPEND IT OVER YOUR HEAD IN A GLORIUOS SHOW OF HUMAN CULTURE PERVERSION.  
THAT IS HOW SERIOUS I AM ABOUT THIS TRUCE.

awesome  
im outie

 **\--  
**

He should just get some work done, finish some mixes up. The best idea right now would be to quit fussing. He quits fussing. In fact, there was no fussing to quit in the first place. He isn't a guy who fusses over stuff. He is the guy who sneaks into the living room to find Sollux conked out in front of the TV, only because wants to arrange cheetoes on him so he'll wake up like a drunk guy who's lost control of his life. In the end, he doesn't. He just places the bag next to Sollux's head (remembers that they need to get some actual food) and goes to work.

It's not strictly working if it's not a comission, but sometimes the muse just bites in the most inconvenient places, and then god help you if you don't have a laptop and a bandaid.

Three days into the initial phase of the shift and about halfway through "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes", the first Earth movie with an even somewhat proper title that he's come across, the shakes really hit. He's spent the weekend in a daze, living on milk and watching from the corner of his eye as Dave does anything but fuss. Really. Fussing is the opposite of what he's doing. He just so happens to live in the same damn apartment, and he can't really help it if he has to walk by the couch occasionally, given that Sollux is currently occupying his living room. In fact, Dave has perfected the art of casually walking by Sollux's curl-up spot and sort of setting down a mug of warm milk on accident. Sollux likes to think that Dave is perfectly aware of how transparent he's being.  


Right now, all Sollux does is hold on to the couch in the hope that he doesn't fall off. The so-called master (he wishes) of the household is out. For the first half-hour Sollux is actually a little glad about that. He chews his fingernails ragged and hopes that the shaking fit will stop soon, that he won't still be sitting there, shivering, wondering if the floor is moving, when Dave comes home.

 

A little later, most of his hoping energy is focused on hoping like hell that Dave comes home soon. The floor really is moving, or else it's Sollux himself who is shaking so bad he can hardly sit up straight. The worst part is that tension in his head, something he knows way too well. It feels more like a nasty infection than anything else, solidified enough to tell him that it has to get out, he has to let it out – his eyes feel swollen in his head, and sparks crack out of them.  
His head thumps with the pain, but the pressure seems less, and before he can think of maybe trying to use his powers on something that nobody will miss if it breaks, before he can think at all, something like a floodgate forces itself open. That tiny fissure turns into a crack and that crack tears wide and suddenly there is electricity between his teeth, piercing into his ears and out of his eyes, draining out of him with off-mark flashes that he would have attested to imbalance if he had been in any mindset to do so. He's terrified to blow the wall out, or worse, but his powers feel weak and clogged. There is already a rattling, a noise like breaking glass and sloshing liquid that he can hardly hear over the metal string screech of the powers in his head, and then the noise turns into silence. And then he is awake and lucid again. As lucid as anyone can feel, at least, when he wakes up to find a dead duck lying a few feet from his head. Sollux tries to focus. He's still on the couch, staring to the floor, and if he isn't hallucinating then this is definitely a duck, and it is definitely very dead. And there's broken glass, scattered across the floor, along with an off-coloured fluid he doesn't even want to identify.

"You managed to wreck my entire collection, man, but somehow nothing else," Dave's voice. He sounds like someone pretending to be uninterested and unruffled, but it doesn't appear to be working well. Sollux tries to sit up, expecting his brain to come out of his ears, and is surprised when he actually manages. The living room is not debris. That's good. What is debris, however, is Dave's puzzling collection of preserved dead things. All the jars have broken, and Dave is standing in the middle of the room, tapping one foot. He looks a little like what Sollux understands an angry housewife to be. It almost makes him chuckle.

"It'th," Sollux starts, his voice muzzy, "dead thingth. It'th attracted to dead thingth."

He spends the next half-hour with his knees drawn up to his chest, staring at Dave as he cleans up the various definitely deceased birds and other creepy dead animals, to be re-jarred at the next opportunity. Finally, after disappearing to the bathroom for what is hopefully a good wash, Dave comes back and sits down next to him in that special sprawling way of his. His arm stretches out and he tugs at Sollux's ear in that way he knows he hates. He still smells a little like formaldehyde.

"I'll be honest with you. This is starting to creep me right the fuck out." That is his man-I'm-worried voice, and Sollux hasn't heard that one before very often. He sort of collapses to the side, and Dave lets him, so they rest together in an angular tangle of too-long limbs.

"Look. How about you eat something and go lie down in an actual bed before you totally wig out on me, is that cool?"

"Jutht trying to get me into bed, Thtrider." he says, but he tends to agree.Those have got to be the weariest, most awkward cuddles of his life. He's reluctant to even use that word, normally, because it's loaded with things he's not sure they are – they're not anything, they're two dudes with a few problems that thry can damn well deal with, a past that no one would believe, just resting against each other and offering a little support. Okay, and a lot of chemistry. It doesn't have to be anything, not anything special.

Sollux is still just a little reluctant to pull away from this weirdly comforting awkwardness, Dave's hand has mysteriously turned up in his hair again, but he pushes all of that away at the thought of food, which is suddenly the greatest idea that anyone has ever had. It eclipses even the almost as amazing idea of lying down and never getting up again, especially if he can occasionally use Dave as a pillow. Or a blanket. Or a space heater.

He gets up, jelly-limbed, trying to keep his balance on bones that are already preparing to soften and stretch, and it is anything but easy. Right now nothing is growing but everything is preparing to do so, sucking the energy ouf of his body and pushing him to consume more. Sollux wobbles a little, finds that his feet still work, and then almost trips over a table when he tries to take a step forward. His vision is doing something wrong, overcontrasting and tunnel-shaped, his eyes screwing up under the warping force of his powers preparing to grow along with everything else. Sweet. Even more abilities that are just as likely to melt his own brain as they are to keep him out of trouble.

Dave coughs. He's on his feet, and he can do that in the blink of an eye, which is a little creepy. He's also awkwardly holding out an arm, a catch-you gesture that would be a lot more reassuring if it didn't remind Sollux of how slow and weak and wobbly he is right now. That is a positive side effect of this whole clusterfuck, at least. He'll be taller than this prick.

He doesn't actually slap Dave's hand away, but he does firmly push it down and teeter over to the kitchenette, like he's either really old or really drunk, on the lookout for those weird brown paper bags humans put their food in. Jackpot. There's two of them on the counter, a box of cereal sticking out of the top. He almost takes that, he's close to scarfing down the first thing he can find, anyways, but then he remembers that dry cereal is a gross thing only Striders eat, and he definitely doesn't fit into that category. Instead he digs his way through potatoes and cheese and other food that he doesn't bother to identify beyond “Dave throws it into a pot and it becomes edible” until he finds a clear plastic dish somewhere in the bag, full of red meat. Double jackpot.

It's prepared the way humans have to have it, cold and sucked completely dry of blood, but it might as well be a fresh kill for how hungry he is right now. Normally hot dogs cut it, but normal doesn't really apply in this situation. Sollux slits the plastic open with the edge of a nail, hooks his claws into the meat and tears off a piece of it. It's hardly as disgustingly bloodless as it looks, so he swallows down most of it in one go, which is probably a little bit gross, but no fucks given, there. Forks are useful for not messing up your hands, but when opening a drawer can lead to spontaneous impalement by shitty swords, he'd rather use his teeth, oversized and pointy as they are.

There's the _snnk_ noise behind him of Dave slinking into the kitchenette faster than he should, courtesy of Weird Time Shit.

“Incase you're still alive at dinner, which at this moment I see as pretty damn unlikely, I may find it in me to make-” then there's a weird coughing sound, a horrified _rgk_ , and Dave finishes, very slowly, “- steak.”

Sollux remembers his manners enough to wipe his mouth. Dave makes the weird noise again. His skin has gone all pale, and it's already pretty pale to start with, which means that now he's in the scale of white usually reserved for plates, walls and his sister's gothy foundation.

That isn't just a “dude, sick” look he's giving him, like he does whenever Sollux dares to do something incredibly weird and alien (and later they both apologize for their cultural insensitivity). He actually looks viscerally terrified.  


“When I thaid I needed nutrientth I meant that literally,” Sollux offers. Just keeping on eating has got to be the greatest act of cultural insensitivity that he's comitted in his life – give or take a few times where he didn't really think to inform Dave of things that he _thought_ were obvious – but he does finish the entire so-called steak while Dave looks on with raised eyebrows and a twisted mouth, which is a grimace of horror by his standards.

“You weren't even fucking kidding. You did turn into a werebeast, right, that is what's happening. The light of the moon or hormones or some shit, and next thing I know there's a half-crazed alien nerd in my kitchen with a piece of raw steak hanging out of his mouth. Awesome. What's next, a muzzle or some furry shit like that? Cute little kitty ears? A tail? Dude, if I'd known that I signed up for the double fetish reacharound olympics when I let you crash at my place, I might have though twice about it. You're a hot piece of ass and all, never mind that part where your ass has the basic structure of an ironing board, but I'm not sure I'd dig it if you lovingly devoured my entrails, so kindly try not to fucking eat me. Just sayin'.”

Sollux has indeed crashed at Dave's place. He's crashed so hard that his impact left a crater and a furrow in the ground, and then he has stayed crashed and has kind of been overgrown by the local flora, essentially fixing him in place. Moments like these, when Dave cuts completely loose and turns the aimless rambling up to full force, he is just the slightest bit exasperated about that.

“Thtrider. Shut your fathe. Shut it. Take a nithe thtrip of duct tape and thtick it over that garbage dithpenthal unit you call a mouth, and thtop thpewing random nonthenthe in the direction of my earth. I won't fucking eat you tho thtop freaking. I'd jutht appreciate thome actual food for once. The kind that containth thomething bethideth cardboard. Are you with me tho far?” He watches the total culture shock change back to the usual stoic expression, and feels just a little apologetic. “I creeped you out pretty bad, yeah?”

Dave falters. It's not that visible, but for someone who has lived with him, slept with him and been in food fights with him, there are a few signs that he's thrown for a loop. Not that he'd ever let that show.

“Creeped out? I've seen some creeptastic things, man, I've seen the bastard babies of Freddy and Jason in live action, but a sudden fatal attraction to steak hardly counts. Dude, what, you want me to be shaking in my pants here, trembling like vibration alarm, is that it? Yeah sure scary alien overlord I'll be sure to do your bidding just don't eat me. Hah.”

Somehow all this stupid bullshit, words without content, make him feel significantly less apologetic. Sollux smirks a little, even though he feels like hell in a wire handbasket, shows off his fangs. “Ith the little birdie thcared of me?”

The reaction is the exact opposite of what he expected. Dave's formerly pale and creeped-out face lights up behind his shades like one of those bizarre Christmas trees. It looks like somebody just told him he won the lottery, it looks absolutely amazing and patently ridiculous. Sollux frowns. What the hell did he just say that can break through the Strider-patented cloud cover and light up a thousand watt smirk like this?

“Birdie, you say,” Dave starts, gleeful by his standards. He snickers to himself, “fuckin' _birdie_ , huh? I tawt I taw a puddy tat. I did, I did taw a puddy tat!” he cackles, cracking himself up, the likes of which only happens once in a blue moon, and Sollux has absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on here. He's got nothing.

“What the actual fuck are you on about? Did thomething hit you in the head, what the _shit_? Are you making fun of me?”

“No shit,” Dave replies. He shakes his head, an approximation of solemnly and sagely, like Sollux has just made a sad mistake and he will be the one to correct him. The bastard looks so pleased about his own stupid jokes he has even forgotten that he's supposed to be freaking out. “Aw, man. You poor, pop-culture deprived child. Didn't you have troll saturday morning cartoons? That's the saddest thing I ever done heard. So that's why you watch 'em now, is it. To fill that empty void where the Looney Toons should've been years ago. I can't say that's healthy but each to his own, Thylvethter.”

“Dave Fucking Thtrider. What the fuck ith a thylvethter. Why do you even -”

And fuck, there goes the floor. It almost does, he catches himself on the counter with one hand, swears, and fends off an immediately appearing totally-not-concerned Dave before he realizes that this is a bloody stupid thing to do. The floor wobbles under him, the room swaying, and he resigns himself to the delightful fate of spending the next few days flat on his back until his body has sorted itself the fuck out. Or until he gets bored of hanging out in bed, tries to run around anyways and only make it worse, which is sort of more likely. Dave steering him along feels a lot like being blind again, and it solidly freaks him out, but he cooperates and takes baby steps, absently licking his fingers clean.

“Fucking gross, man,” Dave informs him. He pulls a grimace that nearly pops his shades off his face, and Sollux shakes his head at him.

“You mean microwaving ithe cream ithn't?” he asks, mustering up something like a bedraggled grin, and promptly collapses backwards on the futon, limbs hanging over the sides.

Dave's head appears directly above him like some sort of celestial body with nearly invisible freckles and a patented expressionless expression, “I was drunk when I did that. And so were you.”

Burrowing under the blankets again, the room feels way too cold, Sollux watches from under the cover of one as Dave sits down and flicks on the television. An accented voice starts narrating the various social pecularities of whatever hyenas actually are. Another incomprensible thing about Dave. He's the hipsters' hipster, so humorously insincere about everything that it is kind of hard to figure out what he actually takes seriously. And he watches nature documentaries, apparentely because he likes them.

Drifting in and out of a fitful half-sleep once he manages to warm up enough, all his energy gone, Sollux learns disjointed things about hyenas and about at least seven types of fish, unable to distinguish between them in his muzzy stupor. Dreams on Earth aren't as horrifying as what he knows from Alternia, but when they feature bug-eyed dream fish, they're bad enough that he jolts every time he wakes up.

He doesn't have a clue how much time has passed, but at one point the television is turned off and something is touching his face. He tries to swat it away, and is startled by the sound of Dave mostly managing to repress his laughter, which sounds a little wheezy up close and raises the question whether he is really all that cool. He is going to say something stupid, Sollux just knows it.

“Gotta present for you,” he says instead, which when Sollux is not currently feeling like his skin's turning inside out could mean anything from a popsicle to a surprise sparring match. When he cracks his eyes open, there's a pair up earphones dangling over his face, brushing his nose.  
“I mixed up a jam for you, an old D'n'B tune I had lying around. There's some of Vantas' distinguished production cut in there, too. I dubbed it Sorry That You Feel Like Ass”.

Sollux sits up as much as he can, which is not a whole lot, and shoots Dave a grin that's stupid with fatigue but definitely there. “Awesome. Gimme,” he says, and makes a grab for the iPod. Dave messes up his hair again, all insincerely affectionate, and Sollux, unrepentant bass addict, shakes his head away, plugs the earphones in, and lets the world go fuzzy and full of drums.Dave leaves him alone with the music. It's a seven minute piece, and the deep bassline doesn't aggrieve his headache, it distracts him from everything else, almost hypnotizing. The drums are a rattle and a heartbeat, chasing each other around a swelling, rushing white noise. The background noise crackles up and down and up and up while the drums get more intense, heavy, shaking him up, a drug in music form. They build up together, almost too loud, and everything drops away into silence for two heartbeats.  


Then the low voice of the cello cuts in. The notes stand on their own, thrumming slow and intense, cascading up and down and in a circle until the white noise rush wraps around them again, supplementing them. The cello notes waver between background and foreground, sweeping open notes while the bass takes over again, and Sollux's head is full of it and exactly nothing else.  
No other noise, no pain, no thoughts apart from a few coloured-shadow pictures flashing through his head. No nothing.

He had to see it to believe that Karkat would actually sit down and willingly learn an instrument, but there it is. He's not perfect, he's still learning, but he channels all his high-pressure intensity into what he plays. Sollux has watched him, a study in selfconsciousness at first, before he rammed the cello's stand into the carpet, almost disappearing behind it, straightened his back, and started playing.

It's like a voice, and he listens to it mingle with the drumbeats until he feels like his head and ears and spine are full of contentedly vibrating wires, like his body has momentarily disappeared. He fumbles for the repeat button and listens to it twice more, trying to analyze the structure after the first listen where he has just let it wash over him, and after that twenty minutes have elapsed and he has no idea how late it is at all.

The rest has done him good in a way. His bones feel fuzzy and weak, his head feels stuffed with cotton candy and tinfoil, but the stabbing headache and the ravenous hunger are gone. He could probably go for dinner, provided it's dinner time and not actually three am, but it's bearable. Sollux attempts to get up, and apart from the wavering that makes his skin prickle and white-on-black sparks light up in front of his eyes, it works.

Dave is at his computer, his huge headphones hanging around his neck, scribbling something on a scrap of paper with one hand. He turns around and gives Sollux a skeptic look, probably expecting him to either fall over or attack him in a fit of bloodthirst.

Sollux gives him a double thumbs-up, prompting a little smirk from Dave, says “Thankth,” and heads to the kitchenette to find something more to eat.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustration by the OP at syblatortue.tumblr.com


	3. Doubletime

"Poor baby."  
  
"The pooretht," Sollux agrees, trying and failing to shake the sleep out of his head. It's afternoon and the concept of time has gone mushy and meaningless. Dave moves around the apartment like someone afraid to make too much noise, not that he ever does, and Sollux has developed an intimate friendship with the hot water bottle. The second one. The first one has met its explosion-related end after he tried to re-heat it with his psionics.

"My thuffering ith enormouth and everything itcheth," he says, coming out strangled and jumping as the pitch of his voice deepens. He tugs at the cuffs of his gloves and makes an irritated noise. They're fuzzy and hideous and restrict his fingers, but Dave has taken one look at the itching and scratching and decided that he was going to wear them or else ruin himself with his nails.

"My heart aches for you, bro. Only it would have been pretty cool if you'd come around a month ago or so, been like hey, Thtrider, I'm kind of gonna have a total alien freakout becauthe we have a really fucked up way of growing, ith that cool? Like that. Y'know, so I wouldn't have been a little less fucking flabbergasted when you woke up one morning looking like balls."

"I thought -" Sollux yawns, his jaw cracking, fangs clicking together as his mouth closes again, "I thought it wath _obviouth_. I mean, I knew you handle thtuff differently, man, your bodieth are weird, but I kind of didn't think that it'd be newth to you I gueth," he shakes his head as something else occurs to him, searching the surrounding premises for a clean shirt, "Bethideth, you didn't tell me jack shit about your body. Not a damn thing."

Dave sighs and tosses him a faded shirt. "That's because my body's normal. No weird shit goes on to tell you about."

"No, mine ith," Sollux disagrees, and then a fangy grin splits his face. From between his shades and the off-yellow bags under his eyes, he gives Dave a starstruck look, like he's just gotten a glimpse heaven or at the very least an ice cream sundae. "Thtrider. Dave. I've had an epiphany, a fucking revelation, everything ith clear and cothmic harmony thurroundth me. Lithten cauthe thith ith tho thtupidly obviouth and I jutht _got it_."

In the universal gesture for I'm a skeptic, try and impress me, Dave lifts his shades a bare few inches. His eyes are the colour of dry blood in the migraine-preventing gloom of the living room. What a poser, Sollux thinks, and then remembers his great revelation.

"You're an alien, man. You're totally different from me."

Dave continues to look not the slightest bit impressed. "Yeah, we've been over that. What about it?"

"You think your body'th normal, yeah? I think it'th kind of weird and I'm the normal one. But check thith out, holy _shit_ , we both are. It'th called freaking biath."

With a grand gesture of douchebaggery, Dave claps one hand over his mouth and pulls off the most insincere expression of astonishment Sollux has ever seen.

"Wow. Dang, man, you're practically a philosopher, I ain't seen nothing like it. That's the simplest truth of cosmic understanding that I ever did hear. Well, nope," and his expression changes to that slick little smirk that Sollux almost entirely despises, "no dice. This is Earth, buddy, you're still the more alien of us. Suck on that."

Sollux stops with the shirt halfway over his head and laughs until he starts to cough and one of his horns gets caught in the sleeve. "You're imperviouth to cothmic harmony, thucker. Now give me your phone, I'm thuppothed to methage AA."

Dave drops the phone next to Sollux's knee. "How about you just use your weird mindlink instead of mooching off my free texts, would that be cool? Or locate your own damn phone, how's that sound?"

"Pthycic powerth for athholeth, part one," Sollux says distractedly, having already torn the gloves off, tapping out his message to Aradia, "precognitive ith not the thame ath telepathic, I've told you like a thouthand timeth."

**so am i right in assuming youll get a little ticked off if i congratulate you  
and that i should rather affirm how sorry i feel for you instead**

  
**yeah that ii2 exactly what you 2hould be doiing you 2hould be feeliing 2orry for me.  
everythiing 2uck2.  
ii cant even fuckiing type riight. **

  
**so dont type so much sollux!  
just use short sentences if you remember how to do that  
how do you feel**

  
**2o bad.**

  
**but that means youre up for big change too  
your body is preparing to grow a whole lot it seems  
how is dave taking it**

  
**freakiing out.  
hiidiing iit though.**

  
**do i have to do something about him**

  
**iid rather you diidnt kiill hiim or anythiing.  
iif iit2 all the 2ame two you.**

  
**im sorry you feel so bad  
im packing up the dvd box set and some food and coming over if thats ok**

  
**AA.  
youre the be2t.  
you are liiterally a godde22.**

  
**i know  
:)**

He laughs but it shakes itself up into an odd kind of wheezing so he stops again, and throws himself backwards over the futon with his bones aching dully. Dave reaches out and poked him in the print of the shirt he's wearing.  
"So far as I see it since you're busy looking like death warmed over then killed off again, the timesister is coming over to tenderly pap your face, have I got that right?"

"Yeah, that'th what'th happening. Ugh, I feel like tho much ath right now. I feel like ath thquared. I fucking hate thith hormone bullshit."

Sollux groans and stretches his legs out in front of him, wobbly and slow, trying to work the weakness out of them. He raises them in a shaky way and props his hands underneath and curves the loose bone and muscle in his back until it aches, and everything goes black and fuzzy but suddenly his feet are in the vicinity of his ears. Dave stares over the rim of his shades like he's never seen something this freaky before. Sollux wraps his arms around his knees, tries to hold the position with gritted teeth, and prompty falls over on his side. Dave doesn't quit staring.

"What the actual fuck did I just see?" he asks, and Sollux curls up on his side and groans. "Ecktherthitheth," he answers, and bares his teeth at Dave's shoes, not bothering to raise his head, when approximately six feet above those shoes, Dave begins sniggering in that really stupid way of his.

"Eck-"

"Don't thay it," and then he loses all energy to be ticked off because that's just to funny, that he can't say a word like exercise without spitting. It's stupidly hilarious and everything hurts and he just wants to curl up on the couch again or stay here. Just stay somewhere warm and try to let everything run its course, his body twisting and warping under the innate force and making him contort when his sinews elongate. Even his skin is far too soft right now, loose on his bones as it prepares to stretch, and his face looks slack and odd for it. He suspects that it's creeping Dave out far more than he lets on, but he's not just going to ask that.

Dave bends double, which is nice of him because in a normal state he'd just have poked Sollux with his shoe, and prods him in the shoulder until Sollux yelps and turns on his stomach, face buried in the blankets. Dave starts to stroke his shoulderblades, oddly methodical, like he's counting between his movements, and Sollux shudders a little. His skin is so damn sensitive that he feels the touches right through it, intense enough to be unsettling. Even his clothes make his skin feel raw.

"I'll leave you two alone," Dave starts, and Sollux rolls his eyes hard enough that he half expects them to make a grinding noise. He swats vaguely at Dave's hand, but the insufferable prick just takes that as an invitation to move on to his hair and – oh, _fuck_ – stroke along the concave side of his horn, just as sensitive or even more so than his skin at the moment.

Sollux is defeated. He manages to say "It'th not like that," but then his voice turns into a sonorous rumbling purr and he just _lets_ him because endorphins are flooding his brain and making him forget for a moment just how much his bones ache.

"It's still weird. But kind of cute, in a freaky alien way. Like two baby grubs, I guess, but what the fuck do I know about that." Instead of absconding to his room, Dave has lowered himself to his knees and keeps right on running his fingers through Sollux's hair, scratching the back of his neck, and Sollux enjoys the wash of calm that those touches bring. Dave really has no idea, less than no idea, about how he works sometimes, but this is something he's figured out and he's glad for it. When he starts circling the base where Sollux's horn segues into his skull, Sollux shudders – "Handth off," – pulls the hands out of his hair, and covers his face with his hands while he tries to get his breathing under control again. After a while he just pulls the blanket over his head.

"Cute," Dave says, and nudges him with a fingertip, "Have fun with your palemate playdate. Shout if you need me."

Sollux nods. This won't ever stop being weird, he guesses. It works like a chemical reaction, messy and chaotic, like a device made of too many parts that all clang against each other. It works with Aradia, as well. She calls Dave mate of my mate all old-fashioned and serious even though that's not quite how it works, and sometimes she just calls him dude instead.

"I don't get why you have to hide from her. She'th not gonna bite your fathe off," he pauses, and remembers the ominous "do I have to have to do something about him", and adds, "I think." She gets protective. That's just sort of her deal.

Dave is good about getting him some milk, and he only asks if he wants a bowl to drink it out once. But Sollux fights his legs anyways until they let him stand up, because he wants to greet her properly.

She comes in through the door beaming, a backpack slung over her shoulder with her wings folded into a pocket of space beneath. When she sees Sollux leaning on the counter, heavily, her laugh turns to a sigh of exasperation. She steps over and kisses him on the forehead in greeting, and then she pulls him into a hug that feels like she's checking if his bones are still in order.

"Go and lie down," Aradia instructs him, "you look terrible."

Sollux returns the kiss to her forehead and laughs weakly, "Thank you. Tho much. If it'th any contholation, you look radiant ath alwayth," It resounds in his heart in that special way when he repeats the old-as-fuck pun, "In fact, I might even thay, aradiant."

"Zing," she grins, pulls him over to the couch and sits him down, "almost an adult and still so silly." Then she demands to see his arms, and bites her lip, shaking her head, when he shows her.

"That looks bad. Really bad. Your joints are all swollen."

He flexes his arm and winces, the itching skin and sore bones hurt, and scowls at her a little, "Not my fault."

"Just how big do you plan on becoming?" she asks, shaking her head. Right now, even with her shift not yet having happened, she's still taller than him. Putting their current physiques next to each other, it looks like she could pick him up and carry him around. Sollux knows for a fact that she can.

"Well," he starts, and he'll have her know that he's sarcastic, not silly, "I wath trying for the thithe of thith thcythcraper by the end of the month, but at thith rate I may have to thettle for the thithe of a truck. Holy shit, AA, it'th not thomething I can control," by that time his voice is trying to sound pissed off, but his vocal cords aren't playing along so he just comes out strangled.

She shakes her head at him, pulls his into her lap. He complies because she has that look about her, that promises she will take care of him unheeding of bitching. He also complies because Aradia in all her whip-touting glory is a total paledom. And he, isn't.

He curls up against her, head down in her lap, and she strokes his hair and stops in mid-movement and says, "Oh! I should really take my shoes off,"

Sollux looks at the floor. It's a terrifying jungle of cables that connect every single piece of electronic equipment into a hivemind. There are the ghosts of cheetos and mismatched socks in there. The floor eats things, and the cables short out the lights or connect the turntables to the refrigerator on a semi-regular basis. Aradia's shoes are a bit scuffed and muddy, yes, but then again it's what she hilariously refers to as scientific mud. Old as hell, clinging to her shoes from the Earth sites she visits.

"Theriouthly?" he shifts when she does, when she debates whether or not she should stand up. This is tradition. Her shoes tracking dirt all over his floor is practically a ritual. "AA, I promithe you there ith nothing on your shoeth that could be worthe than thith floor."

She laughs and leans back again, touching his hair, and kicks off her shoes by the heel, then her socks. Her bare toes curl against the floor like she isn't afraid of what it has to offer. Sollux smiles. She's just fearless like that.

"The Beast Below?" she asks, sorting his hair with her fingers and searching through her bottomless backpack with the other hand. There are whips in this backpack. There's a computer in there. There might be a lost civilization or two, as well. He replies that he'd rather just stay right here and never move.

Aradia collects lost civilizations, almost, the records of their birth and growth, fall and death. She recants the way the cities crumbled, draws attention to the end of them. There is a library someone inside of herself that is full of crumbled temples and forgotten gods.

She carries the old languages inside her head, remembers enough words to whisper phrases to him from the childhood of Earth, things she picked up from books and other sources, her accent turning the words odd and rough. Aradia is full of lullabies and faerie stories, too, from a time when snakes and tigers where what scared the minds of people, when harvest was what soothed them.

Sometimes she sings to Sollux and he doesn't understand the words. He listens anyways, and he listens now when she starts to hum a favourite tune of hers, her fingers soothing the itching skin of his face. It's old, so old that he doesn't remember which one of Earth's old kingdoms it hailed from. He knows the contents, the intent. If it's a lullaby, it's one to the dead. To make them sleep more easily, to tell them that their names will be spoken and beyond the gates of this world something still waits.

There is no use in asking her for happier airs, and he never would. Her low mezzo intonates the words like a chant and Sollux listens to the language and tries in vain to comprehend. Sometimes the edge of a word or phrase sounds familiar. It might be coincidence, it might be their influence on this world. He doesn't know. He knows that she stops sometime, and that she asks whether he wants to eat, and he has to pull himself out of a trance to answer.

"Sure." And that's the thing about her not being human. She can bring a bag of dried meat for him to eat and nothing about that is "weird" at all. He tries to swallow it and immediately claps his hand over his mouth when his throat refuses to cooperate. It tastes salty and _off_ and his body's rejecting it, and the back of his throat is tight, his tongue forcing it back up, and he coughs and the next thing he knows he's doubling over and Aradia is all but hitting him on the back. Then he isn't choking any more but his esophagus still burns and his eyes sting and _everything itches, holy shit,_ and he tries to let her soothe him but it isn't working.

Time is not a constant, it's more like a big ball of -- fuck that, he's choking, he's going to puke, but he does know that Aradia calls Dave and he pops up in the room _before_ she has done so.

The words just wash over him. He watches as she drags Sollux to the bathroom, all but carrying him with no apparent difficulty. And all the while when she's not going "shhs-it's-okay" Aradia keeps bombarding him with words like "imbalance" or "rejection" or "sensitivity" and Dave has not got a single fucking clue what she means.

"Is he okay?" he asks, somewhat hysterically, and Sollux, bless his fucking soul, actually stops making disgusting noises for long enough to ask "What the fuck doeth it look like?" Then he sits back on the floor, collapsing in a lanky heap (and are his limbs longer already?), rests back against the bathtub and makes pathetic growling noises at them. It must be some sort of _I feel like shit leave me alone_ -signal. Dave backs out. Aradia gives him a Look that he has no idea how to interpret and closes the door on him. Well, shit.

There are retching noises from inside that he doesn't bother to contemplate, but they're quickly replaced by the sound of Sollux complaining, which at least means that he's still conscious.

Dave is not sure how many of those fainting spells he can handle. It might be what freaks him out the most, next to the way that his joints and skin look off, somehow. This frail helplessness, on somebody he had been pretty certain was skinny as a rake but constructed out of steel and outfitted with laser cannons. Like it's taken him this long to realize that he's shacking up with an alien, or like this was a sudden and unexpected reminder.

But it's not anyone, it's Sollux, and he's weird in ways that don't matter, usually. Ways that don't worry Dave sick even if he's apparentely supposed to take it in stride as a miracle of nature and only provide his comfort.

It's Sollux the nerd, Sollux the lightweight and hilarious drunk, Sollux who understands exactly how much dying sucks. Who doesn't fall back into fortune cookie language despite his whole doomsayer thing, who just agrees that this whole primal dread thing is fucking balls. That death is petty and gross when it happens more than once.

It's also Sollux who lifts half a lip to show off his fangs when he's told a joke, who cracks up in the middle of telling it because he's just that awkward.

After a while the sound of Sollux's bitching is replaced by running water, and by then Dave's capacity to be surprised has been pretty much exceeded. Or at least almost, when Aradia sticks her head out the door and asks him if he has any Gatorade.

Dave raises his eyebrows at her and she raises hers back like she really has no time for this sort of nonsense from him. "Door on the right, up top," and then he wants to stick his own head in and see what's what, but Aradia pushes him back out and almost flounces over to the counter. She doesn't look mad. She doesn't look too happy, either, but she moves in a perpetual flounce, like the soles of her feet aren't quite attached to the floor.

Immediately she pulls out three bottles of the stuff, and Dave lets her mess around in his kitchen but asks what in the world she needs it for.

"It's an isotonic. Really, did he tell you nothing about how he works? His body conducts electricity, except right now it's clogged."

Not enough, Dave thinks, but he's intrigued to find out that there's actually a reason besides terrible taste why Sollux goes through so much of the stuff.

"So you're basically letting him soak in there?"

Over the course of his shift Dave has had to help him shower a few times. It was an awkward experience, not quite like bathing a cat but close, with a lot of nails, flailing limbs and lispy complaining that could be interpreted as wailing.

"It should help. I can't get the proper liquid additives here, of course, so I'll have to make due with just water."

Aradia is looking at him with the most pleasant smile, her hand curled around a bottle, sitting back on the counter easily, and Dave freezes.

Everything about this, from the way an invisible fishing line connects their heads to the other room to her very nearly open and friendly expression, says shot gun talk in huge neon letters.

"You don't really understand what is going on, do you?" she asks. Straight to the point with no circumventing, that's her. She doesn't bother wrapping her words up in metaphors. Idly, she rolls the bottle from hand to hand while Dave tries to flash-compose an answer that's suitably chill and won't leave him with his figurative pants down.

"Didn't think I was going to be subjected to The Talk when I hooked up with Captor here. Don't worry, Megido, I'll make an honest woman out of him yet, even if he's currently caught up in the currents of a molting fiasco,"

Aradia's already raising her blunt elegant eyebrows at him.

"Got a little money put by on the side, so's we can get our own farm for our adora-ugly hybrid kids and us. I'll sit on the porch smoking a corn pipe whittling novelty sex toys out of wood and Sollux will be reclining in a rocking chair, with an apron on and a mutini kitten in his lap, tenderly gazing at me while our grandchildren play at his fee-"

"Dave Strider, you're talking aimless nonsense," Aradia interrupts. That's what those ram's horns are good for, then. When in doubt, she puts her head straight through the wall.

"I think I did ask you for a straight answer, and I will have one. Fast, before Sollux turns into a prune from continued water exposure. And he isn't molting. I fear to think how you would have reacted to that."

Dave looks past the nigh-imprenetrable shield of his own coolness, and sees something worrying. Aradia is looking worried, tied up in knots by it. It's disconcerting to see her face twist up like that. The fairy wings twitch behind her.

Dave says, "Okay. This is new, and weird, and scary, and frankly I'm freaking the fuck out. Okay. But I'll have to trust your expertise, seeing as you're an alien yourself, that this is supposed to happen. And I'm sticking with him in this."

He is. He sticks his hands in his pockets, absolutely not fretting at all. He really is, at least he tries, but Sollux looks sick and strange and mottled and his eyes spark at weird moments, and he has to draw on the deeper reserves of his cool if he wants to remain calm in the face of that.

"You don't pity him," Aradia says, and he has to rebound, but she's already pressed on with, "you think this is rather disgusting."

"I don't think I _do_ quadrants," he says, ignoring her latter statement, focusing on the first, "I'm human. I mean, I kind of get how it's intimate to see someone at their most pathetic, but it's not really-"

"No." Aradia has started to play catch with the bottle. She has insanely quick reflexes, "That's not what I mean at all. Dave, I know you don't get quadrants. Sollux doesn't really get what humans have between them. I'm frankly not sure what it is between you."

Dave wants to say that he doesn't know, either. He wants to confess his total and complete ignorance to this woman and have it be done with, but his thoughts are having none of that. No, he has no idea what is going on. But he's never been more positive that something is, in fact, going on.

"I don't know jack. Jack Shit is not even a distant aquaintance of mine, and neither is Jack Squat. I live with Sollux. He throws stuff at me sometimes. We pursue recreational sexual activities on a regular basis-"

Aradia giggles at that, not with one hand daintily over her mouth but with a childish snigger. It's actually sort of charming.

"-and I want him to stay. I want to find his mismatched socks in my laundry, and order takeout for him because he's intimidated by the pizza place's phone guy. And yes, I want him to tuck his weird horned head under my chin and fall asleep on me like a bony nerdkitten," he crosses his arms in front of his chest in selfdefense. Aradia is beaming at him. "And I will gladly decapitate any motherfucker who threatens a hair on his head, provided he doesn't deathlaser him to bits first by his own damn self."

Aradia is still smiling that megawatt smile, and her teeth are mostly humanlike and not that weird, and then she jumps up and – is she going to, he wonders – yes, hugs him. Her hugs are full of sunshine and fluffy lambs and vice-like, rib-crushing enthusiasm.

"Decapitating motherfuckers who threaten him is my burden to bear," she says candidly, and then hands him the armful of Gatorade bottles. "Here. An exercise in confronting yourself with the nastier aspects of alien physiology. Go and give him something to drink."

Yes, this is still head-achingly bizarre. Dave resolves to stop minding it.

"I don't think he's gross, jeez, I sleep with the guy," he says defensively, remembering the earlier comment.

Aradia has the audacity to laugh at him. "Don't worry, Dave. It's perfectly fine that you're a bit weirded out by this. He was a little freaked out by your body, too. Humans bodies sure are weird," she says this with the air of one who is full of Sollux's secrets, possibly kept in her hair, and winks. "It's okay, you're adapting to each other. I can see that."

"Freaked out, by who, me?" Dave stares. "But I'm nor...mal." He blinks. "Yeah, I get it, we're both alien to the other, cosmic harmony galore. Awesome. So then, timesis. What do?"

"You need to understand that pity doesn't mean contempt, for us. Sollux can be a little prickly," she laughs at her own understatement and actually physically pushes him into the direction of the bathroom, "he's gotten the idea into himself that you're not supposed to see him when he's weak – which makes sense, you _do_ grief with him – but you need to acknowledge it anyways."

"Tell him that I'm sorry that he feels like shit?" Dave says in a low tone, halfway through the door already. Aradia nods at him enthusiastically and flounces over to the couch.

Oh, fuck him. Time to confront the pitiful lisping werebeast in its den.

 


	4. Cut the bullshit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please be aware this chapter is rated R.

Sollux doesn't say anything at first. He slumps back into the water, and drinks. Because of a definite lack of hand-eye coordination he's not very good at that right now. Approximately half of it spills out over his face. “Bleah,” he says like he's given the idea of disgust due consideration and come to the conclusion that it applies. He sticks his tongue out at the ceiling. The yellow is stained a blueish green.

Dave watches as he sinks in until only his head is poking out of the water on one side, his sticky hair floating on the water, his neck craned so his horns don't bump the porcelain. On the other side of the tub his gangly legs don't quite fit in. They're sticking out. His bare toes, long and sharp-nailed, are curled up against the cold and covered with soap.

Finally Sollux wipes his face with a froth-covered hand. It looks like even something like that takes a lot of effort. Something like a grin takes up residence on his face. It's so crooked that it looks like it could slip off at a moment's notice and possibly turn into a grimace.

"Tho. She grilled you good, didn't she?" There's foam on his chin, too, and his hair is sopping wet. He looks like he plans on staying in the water, possibly permanently. He looks like a wet cat, but like one that is enjoying itself.

Dave shakes his head. Yup, still weird. How much Sollux relies on his whip-wielding protector. "Nope, man. No grilling here. I'm just lightly fried. Prepared with a side of mashed potatos and a nice pepper sauce. That's to say," he leans his hand on the tub's rim and slides his shades off his nose, peering over the rim of them in the time-honoured code that means grade-A bullshit is forthcoming,

"I pretty much just won your hand in marriage, babygirl. Timesis gave me the license to whisk you away to Vegas and get hitched into the doubtfully holy bond of matrimony, complete with cheap vinyl outfits soaked in cheaper beer and a fake reverend pronouncing us dude and dude. You may now kiss the geek, man. Please collect your memorial photographs of the happy event before you walk out into the sunset to a life of fucking to the beat of dubstep."

Sollux has clapped both hands over his face and is making pathetic wheezing noises into them. That is actually kind of cute, in a way that makes Dave want to protect him from people stealing his lunch money.

He shakes in hysterics so hard that water sloshes over the edge of the tub and soaks Dave's shoes. For someone who still considers marriage an elaborate form of blackmail he is blushing an awful lot. Though maybe that's just the hot water. Sollux is skinny and constantly cold and into temperatures that would boil regular people alive, so the water he's sitting in basically a cooking pot.

"And at what part," he loses his shit, even though his voice sounds so weird and hitching right now, a little deeper than before, even more shaken up by the way he keeps breaking down into nasal giggles, "at what part eckthactly do you take my garterth off with your teeth?"

Dave allows himself to smirk. In fact, the expression that's taken up residence on his face is probably hazardously close to dorky smile territory. That's just the kind of insiduous thing Sollux says to get under his skin and wear away at his cool. It's nasty of him, and the really bad part is that it works. Sort of works. When his awkward flirting fails to generate a response somewhere on the scale of ooh-Mr-Captor, it usually makes Dave laugh his ass off instead. And that sort of shit just does not stand with him. It's downright unfair.

If Sollux was up to his game, that statement would have been lethal. He makes a good sport out of dissecting Dave's words and turning the edge of his metaphors on him like some kind of kinky linguistic ninja.

As it is, even feeling like death warmed over he doesn't pass up the chance to flirt. It should be hilarious, watching Sollux Captor attempt to be suave. He starts doing these elaborate eyebrow gymnastics and his voice drops an octave, and he keeps on licking his creepy fangs in a way that is almost pathetically deliberate. When it's turned on Dave, it somehow becomes frighteningly effective instead.   
Dave messes up his wet hair almost in selfdefense. Even to his yellow-flushed face, to the bags under his eyes and the bony bumps of his knuckles, the word adorable can still be applied. In capitals. Shit. When did that happen? He remembers himself -- a self that seems to come from a lifetime ago, when space was still a malleable playing field -- staring. Staring and thinking, for a second, how incredibly similar the aliens were to humans, considering everything they could have looked like. And then, when he got a closer look, realizing how much they weren't.

Sollux has a habit of reiterating that he's extra weird, even for an alien, for any given value of weirdness. Dave tends to agree. For one thing he's flexible enough to count as double-jointed, and right now his head is somehow level with his knees while he tries and fails to fit all of his gangly limbs into the water.

"Let me jutht thtay in here forever," he says, incredibly weary, "and never come out again. Ever." And he does that thing where he overenunciates his words, overdramatic nerd style. All practised sarcasm and world-weariness.  
"Leaving all your stuff to me, I hope?" Dave runs a finger down Sollux's rangy leg with a sudden spark of mischief, dipping under the still steaming water, trying to needle a reaction out of him out of habit.

Sollux twitches out of the way and flicks a handful of water at him, too tired to aim. The skin on his knuckles looks bruised, and there's a sense of overpressure to him, like he's not quite bursting out of his skin, but close to it. Hopefully not literally.

"You aren't gonna fit in there once you grow any bigger, dude. I'll have to take you to the roof and hose you down."  
He shakes his head at this miserable sack of bones glowering at him through a veil of steam and exhaustion. Yeah, he is pitiful. That isn't a good thing in Dave's book, not something that makes him want to jump his bones immediately, not this huge well of positive affection it's supposed to be for trolls. But it does feel kind of mushy in his chest. A little bit too warm, and too tight, nearly tender, like his heart is sunburned or something. Again, when did that happen? "So look," he is not going to admit that he's been running through a worrying slew of mental scenarios, but there are three decades of pop culture's worth in his brain and that amassed knowledge demands that whatever will happen when Sollux reaches his adult size, the first row will get wet, "how about just a rough estimate, how long till I'm gonna have to look around for a bigger tub and stuff?"

Sollux can still not read minds, but he seems to pick up on the sudden discomfort and reflect it, baring his teeth. He's sneering at his own misfortune, it looks like.  
"Dayth. Probably. It'th called an internal clock, Thtrider, yeth, but it doethn't have a digital dithplay. Dayth ith the betht ethtimate I'll be able to give you."

Dave is not a digital clock. He's a barometer. He's fine-tuned to picking up the pressure changes in Sollux's tone, and whatever has crept into it now is low and nagging and anything but pleased.

"And you might honethtly want to conthider abandoning the premitheth when that happenth, becauthe fun and gameth it'th not gonna be."

"Are you stupid. Has your brain gone soft or something, did you radation-poison yourself with your very own deathlaser eyes? I ain't abandoning shit. My ass will stay solidly planted here no matter what kind of grossness is about to go down, so if you even think about kicking me out you're gonna have to literally kick me. 'Sides, I pay the rent for this place. Ergo, I'm staying."  
Sollux pulls himself up, all elbows knocking against the tub's rim. He's agonizing, and Dave has to grab his actual wrist and stop him from chewing at his nails because he looks inches away from that, too. All fidgeting and nervousness.  
"It'th not that I want to thave you from puking your delicate human gutth up. Thothe fucking lather eyeth you tho lovingly dethcribed? Yeah, thothe could get dangerouth. Imagine that." He scrubs over his eyes, and with the bags under them they don't really look all that dangerous, unless you've seen him in action.  
"But if you inthith, be privy to my thuffering. That'th imprethively helpful of you, I'm imprethed."

He doesn't even have enough steam left to argue, and that's kind of worrying. His eyes look bright, more so compared to the bags under them, and Dave isn't sure whether that's because of some kind of fever Sollux is carrying or because they're glowing with their own light.

The thing is, he does feel useful, as much as he can when there isn't a whole lot he can do. But he's here, listening to those endless rants, patting him on the head whenever he looks dejected, and the whole thing works, that's the odd part. Their arrangement works, much as they fall over themselves all the time. It's just that Sollux has – like all other qualities he possesses – awkwardness enough for two. It's rubbing off on him.

"If you want to make yourthelf even more amathingly utheful," he's saying, and he's wearing a little weary grin that can mean nothing or everything, "you can help me wash up. I feel tho groth, there are no wordth for how groth I feel."

"You aren't gross," Dave bursts out, and Sollux raises his eyebrows at him, unreadable again. He feels around on the tub's rim and manages to grab the sponge through concentrated effort. Dave doesn't duck when it's thrown at him, he catches it in midair with a squelching noise.

"I don't mean to rain on your parade here, Captor, and I'm certainly no prude, but Aradia's right next to us, on the other side of the wall, like."

Something in the living room makes a noise like a vacuum in reverse as if on cue, and Dave nearly falls into the tub. "What in the actual fuck is she doing out there?"

Sollux hardly gives that little stunt a glance. He sits up, listens to the noise –- the tv is hooked up to the huge speaker system –- and decides, "Leveling up my Altmer. Awethome, I've got to thank her later." The expression he's wearing looks way out of place on the pale weary wreck of his face. "All I'm athking ith for you to take care of my pathetic ath, and you bathelethly athume the wortht of me. I'm dithappointed."

It isn't all that hard to keep his thoughts on the clean side. Sollux looks half past dead and running on caffeine and stubborn resolve, and something like that shouldn't be attractive. Dave shakes his head at him and starts at the most innocuous place he can find, which is his shoulder, bony and the muscles tied into knots. As soon as the sponge touches him, Sollux flinches. He makes a face that makes him almost but not quite look like a wet cat, and starts complaining.

"I didn't athk you to flay me, fuck. Thearch yourthelf for thome merthy, I told you my thkin'th crathy thenthitive."

He eases up on the pressure when he swipes the sponge down Sollux's arm, over the brittle-looking skin, trying his best to ignore the winching and hissing and feeling kind of guilty about it. Sollux keeps on ranting under his breath, but gradually relaxes and raises his arms without being prompted.

Underneath his ribcage his chest is hollow. Each individual rib is a cage bar, the skin stretched over them and marked by a row of oval scars. Those are not more or less sensitive either way. But there's something so irrevocably alien about them, something stunning about the thought that there were segmented legs growing from there at one point, that Dave spends a good while scrubbing his sides as gently as he can manage, really weirdly fascinated.

He watches as Sollux's chest expands and contracts and expands again, his deep breathing growing quicker, shallower. There's a dull yellow flush on his cheeks when he turns and lets Dave have at his back. Like he can count each of his ribs, he can count his vertebrae when he leans forward like that. There's a bit of foam in the hollow between his knife-sharp shoulderblades.

Dave wipes it away only too aware of the skin under his hands. The bones and angles that Sollux is constructed of always look fragile, breakable, his body only just containing the energy inside. It's almost enough to make him worry that he'll fall apart. But with every touch, even now when he's trying to be careful, Dave becomes bolder, because with every touch he realizes more and more that what he's touching is really iron.   
Sollux squirms and fidgets when it's time for his legs to be washed, and finally he breathes in hard and demands the sponge back. Faking an unruffledness that he doesn't feel, Dave hands it to him and turns around.

"Getting modest now, princess?" he asks, which would be grounds for getting swatted at if Sollux waas in any condition to do so. In fact there's quite suddenly a wet sponge at the back of his neck, soaking his shirt clean through, and then it's gone again and Sollux is sniggering in that snide way of his.

"Didn't thay you couldn't watch," he says, and that means he shouldn't be surprised about getting a handful of water dumped on his head, soaking his hair clean through. He hisses.  
Dave is still the epitome of unruffled. He's completely smooth, that's what he is. He watches.

Sollux sluices himself off, probably a lot more selfconscious than he appears to be. He's still all angles, halfway poking out through his skin, dull grey with yellow shining through on the inside of his arms.

This is not the first and not the last time that Dave has used his shades as a front for staring, but it's become woefully transparent by now. There are definitely no meaningful looks being shared here, and nothing about watching a miserable bag of bones scrub himself off with girly coconut soap is in any way dangerous.

Dave slides from his seat, lands in a puddle of water with his knees, and keeps on watching from that perspective. Sollux is getting selfconscious enough to swat at him with a soapy hand, but then he just sighs, teeth bared. Even his fangs can't lend a look of aggression to his weariness. Dave sidles closer.

Sollux leans an elbow next to his and stares him down through the opaque plastic, his eyes just as opaque. They could both be looking at anything. They just happen to be looking at each other.

In the past Sollux used to have a few pretty weird habits, like eating things that weren't supposed to be eaten. Toothpaste was a favourite until he got tired of Dave laughing at him. He's given it up, but right now his breath does smell like toothpaste, which is better than puke in all respects. Dave is most definitely a romantic.

"You're weird," Sollux says, which is the pot calling the kettle back on so many levels, and snags his shades. He holds them out of reach like Dave is really going to try and get them back, and leans in.

And jumps half a foot in the air when a surround-sound dragon shout completely kills the moment. They both look over to the door as one. Sollux starts sniggering. Dave tries to bite back his grin but the sound of Sollux's laughter is enough to cheer up anyone.

Eventually they're just sitting there, making stupid noises. Dave demands his shades back. He makes a grab for them, Sollux skillfully evades, and then they are kissing, sudden breathless awkwardness. Their noses knock together and Dave can feel those fangs rubbing his lip raw and he refuses to give a fuck.

A dripping wet hand tangles in his hair and he realizes how much he missed this. They warm up, getting in each other's way at first because they don't know what to do with themselves, and then they become surer and remember exactly what they're supposed to be doing.

Dave goes from on his knees to standing, and Sollux pulls at his hair hard enough to make it hurt, taking the intensity from seemingly nowhere. He goes with the motion and makes it his own and pushes him down, dominating the kiss with his own hands clamped firmly around Sollux's bony shoulders, just barely listening to the noises they're both making.

Breakable as everything else about him looks, his mouth is sharp and kissing him is an adventure in getting his lips bloody. Dave has forgotten how to mind. He's started to love the feeling of his mouth bruising on those fangs.

Eventually, he pulls away. He's standing in the bathtub with one leg and without a clue when exactly that happened. His jeans are soaked to the knee. That's enough to almost make him laugh again, in a dizzy way. Dave wipes his thumb over his lips and licks them, trying to remember how to breathe.

"Wash my hair?" Sollux offers, looking fantastically winded, and licks a smear of red from his own sore, yellow-tinged mouth.  
He's back to complaining as soon as his head gets wet. Dave stops listening to him, and when he works his soapy fingers into the messy black strands and around the contrasting horns, the complaining becomes mysteriously quieter and eventually falters.

The shampoo belongs to Sollux as well, which means that it smells like candy and probably gives a glossy shine, and Dave doesn't really mind. He likes the smell. His hands become tangled into Sollux's hair on their own, without his interference, and the lathering gets interrupted more than once, every time one of them remembers how much he likes the other's taste.

By the time he's scrubbed clean, Sollux's voice is thick with purring – Dave is irrationally proud of that achievement – and they're both more than a little disoriented.

Wrapped in a towel and with his hair hanging damply into his face, he doesn't look all that intimidating. But the sharp angles there are to him are even less easy to ignore.

"Get me clotheth," he demands, shakes his head like a wet cat, and adds, "and get yourthelf clotheth. You're thoaked."

Dave is indeed soaked. When he comes out of the bathroom, Aradia only hardly spares him a glance at first. She's indeed engrossed in playing like she's getting paid for it, and he almost hopes he can step past her. Then she stretches her legs out, hits the pause button, and looks at him properly. Her eyebrows lift towards her hairline.

"Like trying to bathe a cat, is it?" she asks pleasantly, but the effect is rather ruined by the dirty grin that she's sporting. She has tied her mass of hair back with a scrunchie, and she doesn't look out of place at all in the chaos that surrounds her.

"Not even close," Dave tells her, and means it. He goes to find some dry clothes and spends a disproportionate amount of time in his room, leaning out of the window and trying to catch some cold air. A cold shower would do him good right about now. When he's sure that his face has completely stopped being red, he goes to dig through his drawers. They aren't that messy but there is the persistent risk of sudden katanas that has him exercise extra care.

Finally he gives up searching for Sollux's clothes. He's mostly let go of the traditional compulsion to wear only marked clothes by now, so the shirt Dave tosses him when he gets back to the bathroom is one of his.

It's a gift from Sollux, though, and his unique sense of humor kind of shows. The shirt is black and "wub wub wub" is printed across the front of it in garish neon. Dave approves. It's his kind of shirt.

Once Sollux is clothed, barefoot and his hair still sort of wet, he goes right back to curling up on the couch and watches Aradia slay her way through a string of quests with frightening efficiency. It's a weirdly domestic scene.

Dave makes a move to retreat to his room, but he stays there on the doorstep when two heads turn to look at him in unison and Sollux says "Come on, Thtrider," like he's really missed a clue. He goes and sits with them.

Sollux sits there between them, swathed in a blanket and looking pleased as goddamn punch, and Dave isn't even mad. The silent weariness was really painful to watch. By all rules of sanity this should be the most awkward situation he's ever been in, but somehow it isn't. Dave thinks that might be because of Aradia, who doesn't allow awkwardness around her. Her smile always looks like she knows something you don't want her to know, which is quite probably true.

"Tho if my thtomach doethn't thtab me in the back, dinner would be kind of nithe," Sollux says, but he sounds half asleep again already. Aradia looks down at him fondly. Her expression suggests that this is the first time in recorded history that she has actually heard him ask for food. Dave scrubs a hand over his face, all kinds of amused. Very belatedly he realizes that he's forgotten to put his shades back on, and then it occurs to him that he doesn't care. "Megido, if you're done with showing the dragon who its daddy is, think you can cooperate with me on that?"

She kills a bear while hardly looking at the screen, CGI blood scything out over the snow, and keeps on smiling pleasantly.

"I may find it in me."  
Everything blurs together into a much-needed ball of warmth and comfort, and Dave and Aradia whispering about how cute (her words) and ridiculous (his) he looks with his mouth half-open when they think he can't hear them. At which point Sollux wakes up enough to tell them that both their faces are stupid. And promptly falls back asleep, or at least adrift. His face is cushioned against Aradia's shoulder. Dave is sitting next to his feet. He feels warm and tired and sprawled-out, unable to move and unwilling to do so.

Somewhere along the line there's an improvised video game match that he's somewhat conscious of. Dave loses everything and does so hard. He races like he wants to show off his awesome tricks and combos, Aradia races like she wants to go as fast as possible in the straightest possible line. He tells them that they should be glad he is mostly asleep and a little bit dead or else they would feel his wrath. Aradia laughs at him.

When she prods him in the side gently, Sollux jumps in shock, and starts eating on autopilot as soon as he's aware that food is available. He barely tastes it, but this time his stomach accepts it and shuts up. Which is welcome because he hates being sick as much as the next guy. He finishes with a glass of milk, gets mocked for his milk mustache and wipes it off on Dave's shirt. Then he goes back to dozing, the only activity that he's fully invested in right now.

Weariness settles on him like fog and sinks down into his bones and he drifts around in a half-sleeping place only to occasionally wake up, say something he hardly recognizes the meaning of, and fall back asleep again. It's hard to stay properly awake when he's being doted upon like this. In the psychedelic feverish space of his drowsy mind, something drops like lead through his skull into the bottom of his stomach.

He doesn't deserve this. Two people on either side of him, doting, fingers in his hair and a hushed conversation for his benefit. So he can lie there like someone cut his strings, and bitch and eat food and breathe air. He hasn't been able to write a line of code for over a week, over two weeks because he's been in a slump since before the shift hit, and that is about the extent of his abilities, apart from making stupid jokes. And possibly blowing up the moon.

Sollux feels like his usefulness is draining out the bottom of his feet, getting less and less, the sick feeling of I'm-not-doing-anything-productive accumulating with every day. Yes, so it's stupid. So taking energy in is what he's supposed to be doing right now. But it doesn't work like that, because he can reiterate and re-reiterate it all he wants, a voice will reply useless, useless until he wants to punch his own thoughts in the face.

He makes an effort to pull himself together and up and appear at least somewhat awake. When Aradia notices that, she actually props him up, and he nearly falls off the couch face-first but finally he's sitting sort of straight.

“What'd I mith?” he asks his knees, his face buried between them.

“Today is the day Dave Strider got completely destroyed,” she says cheerfully, “we will hold a beautiful wake for him.”

That is, according to her, still the funniest joke ever. She giggles, and Dave pulls the kind of face that he does when his shades aren't on – and he has indeed taken them off and placed them semi-reverentially on top of a stack of magazines. His eyes go all squinty when he does that and it actually sort of looks like he's trying to glare at his own nose, and if Sollux focuses on that then he won't remember what he thinks about himself.

“Megido. You gotta promise me. Never get in a car or we're all fucked. Your lead foot is terrifying.”

“Rose has promised me lessons. I might be able to diversify between racing games and an actual car, who knows?” She leans over Sollux, all neatly folded wings and a sardonic tint to her grin and actually prods Dave in the side. He doesn't flinch but he does raise his pale eyebrows at her.

“I appreciate that you're hatching some kind of evil plan together with my sister, that makes me feel really comfortable, you don't even know.”  
Sollux can feel his face twist into a grin even though he feels like a wet dishrag. Dave is trying to out-argue Aradia, but her bright grin is like armor. It deflects everything. He should know, he's been on the receiving end. Often enough that he's glad now that she's using her power for the time-honoured sport of knocking Dave down a peg.

“Honethtly? Are you both lithtening to yourthelveth? Now thith ith entertainment.”

Aradia doesn't just do things like wipe his face with a napkin when he's gotten something on it, which has happened before. She picks up on what he's saying like she's plucking it out of his head, and now she rubs her thumb over his brow like she wants to wipe away the premature lines of worry there, and simultaneously gives him a look that promises every attack against himself will be treated swiftly and with so much mercy that he'll drown in it.

“You need to rest yourself, you're probably still owing sleep to yourself from the countless all-nighters you insist on pulling.”  
She picks up that background noise that buzzes around his head, like bees in a jar banging against the glass, and then she unscrews the lid and lets the bees crawl over her palms, and calms them down. She doesn't even need gloves.

This metaphor has gotten away from Sollux, so he just sighs, deflates, breathes out. Sleep is quantifiable, she's right about that. Sleep is like a debt, and when he goes days without it and through feeling shitty and tired right into feeling six feet off the ground and bulletproof, it comes back with the crash.

That's welcome, at least sometimes, because while his body takes back all the sleep he owes it, he can't think. He's good at thinking, but sometimes he wishes there were better switches, mute, pause, to get it all the way off. There are imperfect ones. That's just what they are; imperfect.

“I promithe I'll behave,” he says in his best long-suffering tone, and she kisses his forehead like he's said something right even though his tone was not entirely unsnide. Sollux would like to pretend that he's only clinging to her like a magnet because he is that damn sick, but really her affection is catching. He suspects that it's her long-term goal to get Dave to join the snuggle pile instead of just sitting there and looking at them like he isn't sure what he's looking at.

“I would instruct Dave to make sure of that,” she says, and scratches his head until he's flaming yellow with embarrassment, “but I think he's a little bit of a bad influence.”

Dave insists to let them know that he's a lot of a bad influence, and good riddance. If it weren't for me then Captor would still be dead boring, he says. Sollux agrees that Dave is the best bad influence, and then he nearly keels over again. This time he sort of flops over on Dave, who makes an affronted sound at the horn poking him in the shoulder.

“Okay, okay. I get it. You need cuddles, that's chill, that's in fact as cute as a milk crate of kittens in ribbons and mittens. You're manipulating me with this, am I right?”

“Ergh.” Sollux relocates his face against Dave's collarbone and tries to prop himself back up. His arms feel like rubber. He tries again. He gets halfway before his arms decided that he's staying. Dave smells kind of really nice. He gives up on trying.

Aradia starts stroking his hair again, and for a moment this feels really weirdly like a cross-quadrant threesome. Dave claims he doesn't do pity, but right now that's what he's giving, finally touching him – like he'd touch a kitten, all chaste and careful – and like he's decided that this isn't too weird for him. His heartbeat is music, dully ticking away in his chest. Sollux knows that when he leans to Aradia he'll hear the same tone. Deep red. Swallowed a clock.

Fuck. He really doesn't deserve this.

He is going to be selfish and take it anyway and try not to think, as if his thoughts ever listened to him yelling SHUT UP, sometimes out loud.  
Aradia doesn't care if he doesn't deserve it, he realizes. She's going to give it, all her forgiveness, whether he thinks so or not. Right now, she drapes herself over his back like a cape. She's not as big as she used to be, he thinks, and then, no, he's grown. And he's going to keep growing whether he likes it or not, too. That would be kind of cool if his body would just get it over with. He sighs and tries to decide between asleep and awake.

Finally Dave shuffles like he's afraid to move him.

"He's passed out again, hasn't he?"  
Sollux hasn't passed out. He just doesn't want to move. He makes a shapeless noise and hides his face in Dave's chest and hopes that no one will take pictures.  
"Hey, Captor. Hey, Sollux. Hey. You awake?"  
Sollux talks in his sleep. He hates the fact that it's common knowledge, but on the occasions where he passes out on Dave, his dreams get weird enough that he has to talk about them, even while still unconscious.  
"Fthhh."  
"Okay, cool. You asleep?"  
"Nah."  
He can hear Dave chuckling – can feel it, too, that shaking in his chest – and tries to swear revenge, but his head won't move. This is just too comfortable, even if Aradia's horns will probably concuss him if he makes any sudden movements.  
"Hey, Sollux. What's your favourite colour?"  
Wow, that's funny. Dave must be taking lessons for that. He's never heard that one before, no one's ever tried to confuse him like that. What a novel idea. Sollux tries to get his mouth to work and spit out the world's most obvious answer. "Bllr-" he says, shakes his head, "Bll-red, bread,” is as far as he gets. Oh, good. It feels like his mouth has been stuffed with cotton.  
Dave makes a noise like someone who is not going to burst out laughing because he's too mature and cool for that. He thinks he has practice with that, keeping his stone face polished and smooth, but really it's full of those cracks and chips, those awkward little twitches that give him away, every time.  
"Dude," he says, and he sounds very sincere about it, "you are toast." And he laughs, and he suddenly sounds happy, with no strings attached, with no walls.

They're a laughing pile on the couch by now, dumb and carefree and not quite kids any more, not even close. This static in his head is like being drunk and hungover at the same time, all the swaying gallows euphoria of alcohol with all the toxins attached, all pleading with unseen forces that he won't feel like puking again. For that, it could be worse.

She laughs at their jokes because they're anything but funny, and when she does disentangle herself, Aradia promises to come back soon, take care of him, watch and wait that he'll grow to be taller than her. She eases up on her usual crushing hug this time, bumps their foreheads together gently and kisses him on the cheek.

Dave doesn't get a hug because he resists and pulls up the ice shields, but Aradia radiates a wave of unfiltered cheerfulness in his direction with her smile. It hits like a punch, Sollux has experience with that. Dave is hit, even if he doesn't show it, he can't help but let his smirk turn into a genuine smile, straight instead of crooked.

"There's fairy dust on my couch," Dave says, when they've propped themselves up together and he's playing his weird videos that sound pleasantly like mechas having sex on a drum kit.

Sollux rests against his chest with an unselfconsciousness grown from weariness, a mental state in which he just does not give a fuck, and turns his head to watch the screen.

A wild-haired female human blows out a cloud of thick white smoke and collapses into dry grass and the bass underscores her every move. Sollux feels just as drugged. He aches, all over, stiff fingers and his back twisted and curled. Behind him, Dave has abandoned his running commentary. If anyone didn't know them they'd call this saccharine.

Dave is a comfort pillow, Dave is sober enough to laugh at his jokes – Sollux is pissed that he can't digest alcohol right now – and they're warm together and there isn't much they can hide when they are like this.   
Sollux mouths along the beat that pulses in time to the strobelights. The scene on-screen is a wild confused dreamscape. He wants to crawl inside and let the swaying colours paint his face.

He wants the music to seep into his ears like a drug, thick and white and flashing light, fucking his brain into submission with his auditory canal as the gateway. Sollux unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth, takes a mental inventory, and comes up with a burning in his head, a blurry filter overlayed on the migraine and aching limbs. High on hormones and too much sleep.

Dave laughs into his hair, stirs it with his breath, and it's all corny-sweet except that it isn't, it's them, with angles and corners.

"What the fuck," he says, a statement, "are you singing along with dubstep? Is that actually what I am hearing?"

Humming, rather. Sollux makes a throbbing noise in his throat, clicks his tongue in time with the beat, breaks the tune by laughing when Dave mutters something behind him. “I'm sorry, ith that weird? Am I making it weird?” He shuffles around in place, tries to get his legs to fit onto the couch, and suddenly craning his head to see what's on the screen isn't important at all. He can still hear it.

Dave has hooked up the big speakers to the TV, and the self-burned disc with videos, handheld camera quality and studio level audio, is better heard than seen anyways. It's doing wonderful things to his ears, strumming deep in the air, almost as good as with headphones. The neighbours seem to have given up complaining. He shifts again until Dave makes an incovenienced noise.

"Yeah so I kind of still need my face, it'd be really cool if you didn't jab me with your horns quite so much. Maybe just a little if you have to but frankly if you really need to be poking bits of me then I've got some others where believe me it'd do more good. Maybe not quite as hard though I mean I know you're rough and I'm resistant but still, man,"

Sollux laughs until he coughs and then laughs some more, and scoots down until his head is against Dave's chest. He scrubs a weary hand across his face, all bones and thin skin, and tips his head back until it's firmly against Dave's sternum.  
"Dave. Thrtider. Shut the hell up, theriouthly. My brain'th thrcambled. I can currently not feel my fucking feet. I'm terribly thorry for the inconvenienthe, trutht me, but I can't keep up with your bullshit right now.” He shifts. Dave coughs, in that way that indicates the problem doesn't really lie with his throat.

There's this comfortable haze around Sollux. It's made up of music and a slight respite from the nagging pain, from the guards let down and the cast-off armor. They're sitting there and the shields of bullshit and frontery are at a record low, perfunctory and nothing else.

There are also knees in loose black jeans on either side of him. He is sitting right between Dave's legs. But that's okay, because he can really not feel his feet, and all he wants to do is fall asleep, comfortably, forget about all the backstabbing his body is pulling. Damn, but he's warm. Dave is glowing like a forge, against his own clammy skin. And now he's laughing, just a bit, more like chuckling.

He reaches out one freckled arm, contorts himself, and fails to grab at the can of Tab on the table. He gives up, 'aw shit', and plants his hand flat on Sollux's head instead. It just feels awkward and weird, and then he curves his fingers, lets them catch on the tangles, and Sollux goes right with the motion when he pulls.

"Unfair," he complains, but that's because he's a hatched complainer. Dave has wisened up, has gotten some sort of practice, and now he's scratching little circles on his scalp, making a mess of his hair, and Sollux shifts and pushes his head up into the hand. It's not even a conscious reaction. This feels good and he wants it to keep on feeling good. Those little prickles on his head that trickle all the way down through his body, liquid sparks, almost electricity, the forge glow of Dave's body and his steady breath, that's the bellows, and Sollux lifts his head more when the pressure circles around his horns, dull human nails that scratch just enough, scratch all the itches out.  
Dave's voice mixes with the music and takes on the same throbbing shape as the beat, smooth and deep and with an edge of drawl, seeping into his ears. Sollux feels warm, weak in the muscles apart from the crackling sparks of endorphines, feels dull and slow in a way he didn't think would feel this good. His thoughts aren't the rip tide and waterfall that they always are, now they're a calm lake, stagnant, just shivering a little in the breeze. No, not even water, warmer and slower, like molasses. Oh, damn. He feels kind of high.

"So I might be going completely wrong here and taking a trip into fauxpas ville and you'll punch me out with your brain for surpreme cultural insensitivity, but this shit's supposed to make you feel good, right? Occurs to me that you feeling good might be an improvement to your whole feeling like toasted ass situation. And because I'm so incredibly gracious, and because I'm also kind of really fond of your weird alien ass, I'm kind of taking it up as my chivalrous duty to un-toast it."

He can feel Dave smirking into his hair, like he's figured out a secret. "So how's it feel, warm fluffy blanket kind of deal?"

His voice is the music. It's indistinguishable, it mixes with it and both drips like something slick and warm into Sollux's brain, the words waves of sound that vibrate in Dave's chest and over into his own body. Somehow, the content manages to arrive there too. It takes him some time to interpret it. He keeps getting distracted by warmth and sound, he keeps getting confused. His thoughts melt like wax.

"Not quite," he gets out, and that's both the truth and a serious understatement. He's melting, falling back into cotton and ribs, and his skin is raw from sensation all over. Now Dave is the one who hums in time with the music, vibrating with the sound he imitates. Even his fingers are warm, and even on the semi-sensitive surface of his horns the heat bleeds through and makes every touch worse twice over. Sollux squirms and turns his head like an overaffectionate cat and the purring noise is in the back of his throat, making his body shake in time.

And this would be where he forces those impulses back down, where he disallows himself permissiveness for reasons of being too fucking embarassing. Except that his body is starved for warmth, his mind just the same, wrapped in voice and music and that touch that seems to be everywhere at once.

It doesn't quite go down all the way, stays in his chest and stomach where it belongs, he's too sick to be lit to flare easily. But this is worse than being turned on. This is being permeated down to his bones, with a liquid-light feeling of flowing hormones that turn him into a graceless purring mess.

Damn, Dave's hands are clever. He knows how to use them, all craftiness from the turntables and skill from a world that isn't this. Sollux can feel sword callouses on his palm when his fingers wander under his shirt. He shivers at the hand on his stomach, not because he doesn't like it but because it feels too good. He's vulnerable, his skin is gone and what is underneath is hot and cold at once, and Dave has his hands on it.

He moves and acts like he doesn't know what he's doing, that he's treading dangerous ground, but he does know. Has to. Sollux blinks as the room goes off-kilter and then that doesn't even matter, it's all burned away by crackling lights behind his eyeballs. Sparkles in his brain from how tired he is, jumpy strobelights that are made worse by the persistent scratching fingers. The fingers touch his face, like an accident, inbetween burying in his hair, and it's not even a choice between melting or rejecting any more.

Every cell in his body is vibrating from that source in his throat, and he melts. His shoulderblades rest against Dave's chest and they're both too angular that this should be comfortable, but he doesn't feel the bones. He only feels warm. He feels his hair get combed, his head kneaded, and then Dave fingers his horns again and even the music becomes secondary.  
He's scratching his nails over the surface, harder than anyone who knows anything would dare to do, and it feels like his fingers are going straight through to his spine, snapping little sparks on the inside. It buzzes, in his head and in his throat, it shoots tingles to fingertips and toes and he feels his nervous system as clearly as he would when his powers zap through it with his brain as the source.

His head lolls back and Dave brushes his thumb over his exposed throat, slowly from his collarbone up underneath his chin, feeling the vibrations."So," he drags the word out, smugly curious, warm because everything is warm, "this is doing something for you, yeah?"

Yeah.

"Finally you're making yourthelf utheful," he puts in with a failed attempt at snark, speech obscured with the persistent purring. His eyes are half-closed and there might be sparks crawling out of them, little side-effects to the mess his nervous system is in where all signals point towards pleasant overload.

It's comfort, but it's comfort with an edge and a kick. Useful doesn't even begin to cover it. Dave's hands are used to tweaking, pushing buttons and turning dials, and he's doing all the right things without knowing how to. The music is background noise to his inane questions, and he could be saying absolutely anything just as long as his voice keeps sounding like that.

"Right fucking there," he spits out, through a mouth that doesn't seem to do what he wants it to, when Dave does some kind of circling thing with his fingertips and makes his vision go blurry. The ceiling melts as he looks at it. Sollux does not give a fuck. The whole room can do the surreal thing and melt like wax for all that he cares, his own bones can go soft and his skin transparent and thin as long as this does not fucking stop.

Dave laughs at him, actually laughs out loud, a sound like a snare that explodes like white light in the dark rainbow and shadowed grey buzz of other noise. The colours pervade under Sollux's skin.

His smugness just keeps growing, it makes him sound like such a bastard, it makes his voice sound so nice.

"You're getting off on this," he says with so much drawl it's almost dripping, and tweaks his secondary horns like dials. Sollux is not going to argue. He isn't going to do much of anything except press his head closer and let the rest of his body slump, motionless. He feels warm all over and he feels the little needlepoints of sensation everywhere but now when that grip becomes a little bit firmer and squeezes the membrane it shoots straight into his spine and down his spine between his legs and he spasms like an electric shock. He can feel his eyeballs heat up as they flare.

"Funny, I think I remember asking a question. This is fucking turning you on."

Dave is an asshole. He's an asshole who is gloating like he's the very first fucker to figure out how to enduce an endorphin high. Sollux feels his mouth open, to breathe more than to speak, and he shudders because this is not something that is supposed to happen in any quadrant, this is the kinkiest fucking thing that has ever happened and it feels damn amazing.

"No shit," he groans, but the rest of the response gets swallowed up by an undefinable noise, and then, “Thtrider – aughfuck don't thtop," and because Dave is a bastard, an absolute bastard, he slows his fingers down until they're tickling the tips where he can barely feel them.

"What, that?" he asks, his words dragging smooth and slick, like he believes that this is what he's supposed to do, supposed to say, like being a bastard is a good thing to do at this time. It's scarily effective.

Sollux doesn't bother not answering, he chokes out “Yeth, that, you fucking –“ and is saved the effort of thinking up something to call Dave because his voice, along with his wits, is gone when he feels a hand on his chest. Correction, going down his chest.   
The borrowed shirt rides up under the rough smooth fingers, playing over the prominent ribs and over the concave of his stomach and over his hipbones, and he goes "damn you're skinny," and usually Sollux would have shot back 'you love it' (because he does) but right now he's inconvenienced by trying to push into both of Dave's hands simultaneously, rocking back and forth in his lap.

His hands are gripping onto Dave's knees on either side, holding on, and now he starts kneading them with his nails out and Dave doesn't even budge. He's silent, for all of two seconds, and lets the music do the talking with a bass that throws dark velvet punches into Sollux's gut and a rhythm that scrapes his eardrums raw, and then he's rubbing him through his jeans and Sollux says "Fuck." very quietly.

He tips his head back and lifts his hips up and Dave obliges him, squeezing until he feels himself strain towards the tweaking fingers. Dave's playing tricks on him, playing with him, and he's having fun with making him melt into his hands and that's okay because Sollux is having fun too, or at least feeling so damn good that he can't remember how to form words, which is pretty much the same.

Dave snaps the button on his jeans open and slides two fingers inside, toys with the seam of his boxers, and then his hand's in his jeans and he's palming him through the damp fabric, not bothering to tease. Sollux's hips push up, back down, he bites his lip until there's blood-tinted saliva on his chin and realizes that he's been pumping into the gripping fingers for a while now, unconscious, without his volition and growing kind of desperate.

His throat throbs with a groan, vibrating like the rest of him and Dave chooses that moment to give the base of his primary horn a good firm squeeze, and he just blanks. Nothing is important any more. Dave is making sounds, but they arrive without meaning. Never mind, he wants him to keep talking just so he can listen to the smooth dragging sound forever.

"Wow, you're hot," he sounds impressed, and the corner of Sollux's brain that isn't in a complete stupor thinks that he's impressed with what he can do, the buttons he's figured out how to push, and then he gives up on thinking utterly. He is hot, feels himself grow hotter and stickier under the fingers that grip the base of his bulge, through his boxers, that pull at the length until the tip rubs against the material and damp against the palm of Dave's hand.  
"You're soaking," and all thought processes are running 'keep doing that, right there, oh fuck don't stop talking', but the last one becomes secondary when Dave chuckles again, the dirtiest fucking sound, and closes his mouth over one primary horn.

He's suspended, not touching the ground, not touching anything but mouth and hands that are driving him deeper into this trance, sensation and music swelling like light and throbbing inside of his spine and his stomach, his pulse an aching thud where they touch. There is nothing to him now but a nervous system that's laid completely bare, vibrating like wires, completely full of it, there's nothing there to tell whether his eyes are open or closed and it doesn't matter because he's seeing light burst anyways, fill his head.

He turns his head and feels the warmth of a tongue and then the scrape of teeth, his hands twitching unconsciously tearing at the knees he's gripping. It centers in his throat and vibrates outward, centers in the dizzy mess inside his head and the warmth in his gut and the throbbing against those clever fingers, light heat and noise swelling alongside his spine, radiating through his limbs, harder with every pulse.   
Harder until it almost hurts and the nervous system that's all that remains of him – that and a very quiet strand of thought that's been running since this started and is still active somewhere underneath the high, 'oh fuck oh fuck what is this do that again' – until everything's rubbed raw, pulsing exposed to some kind of cold air and more warmth, throbbing against fingers and palm, somewhere behind him Dave dislodges his mouth, a sudden slice of cold when he blows against the wetness he left, counterpoint to the heat that almost itches.

He says something, but it's all a lot of noise and drips out of his mouth distorted, and then he does that thing with his teeth again, clicks them dully against the smooth surface, curls his fingers just so and again and harder, everything harder, even the bass, and Sollux can't even lift his hips into the touch. He just melts.

The vibration goes through him in shivers, long waves of them that throb with blood, wet between his thighs, rolling over him and building and building pressure that feels so good he might die of it, he might really die of it, until it breaks, straight over him, and rips through him mind and body and leaves him a shivering jelly-like mess.

There is a dully white something above him with darker specks flowing across it. That's the ceiling, once the aimless stare he projects at it resolves into recognition. Every inch of him is bathed in energy, his blood has been replaced with drugs and every breath is a high.

Sollux tries to move his fingers, then his toes. They might have moved, he can't quite tell. There's also when he tips his heavy and light head back, a somewhat distorted version of Dave's face over him. He's slid down lower, head somewhere against his stomach and probably poking him into the ribs with his horns. They're sore, which is nearly as bad as his hair aching, but not nearly as unpleasant.  
He has never seen anyone blush like that. It must be the translucent human skin, because where it's white usually, it's now a deep ruddy flush, across his entire face and making his pale eyebrows stand out. His eyes are a little bit glazed. Sollux's own probably look like glass in contrast, shiny coloured glass that has a very bewildered mind somewhere behind it.

"Damn." he thinks to say it first, and Dave says it at the same time, and then they just kind of look at each other, flushed and out of it. Eventually Dave remembers to actually pull his hand out of hiss pants. He wipes it on Sollux's thigh. More silence. The trance dispels, but slowly.

"Mind telling me what I just did?" Dave finally asks, and that must be the stupidest question that anyone has ever asked. It's like a vacuum of ignorance, this is incredible. Sollux would react accordingly but he is still trying to form words.

"Theemed to me you might have jerked me off, but I don't know. You tell me."

Okay, there they are. His systems booting back up have thankfull made regaining his sarcasm a priority. He could likely be sarcastic at Dave in his sleep. He has apparentely already done that, if he's to believe he has a penchant for sleep-talking. He props himself up, with some initial difficulty in coordination, until he's somewhat vertical. Their legs are hopelessly tangled and his own have gone numb. He tries for a grin, but even his face has gone slack. Holy shit. This is certainly not something he expected. He doesn't even hurt any more, it's like everything is painkillers. The music has stopped, somewhere along the line. Dave gestures at him, all arrested little waves of his hand that he probably thinks look expressive.

"No shit. But not just that. Man, you looked like you were in a complete coma, was I supposed to put you into nirvana like that or was that a really perverted thing of me to do?"

"Yeth to both," Sollux decides, "yeth it was completely fucking perverted and no normal perthon would do thuch a thing, and fuck yeth you were thuppothed to do it. I feel amathing. I am going to thleep forever now, thank you very much."

He doesn't blank out again after that, but it's a near thing. Parts of his brain are going on and off like lights, and Dave says something about ruined pants that is for some reason hilariously funny. He doesn't give a fuck about pants that are not even his, nevermind he's wearing them at the moment.

"Better now?"

No amount of nodding and no sarcastic statement in the world can convey how stupid a question that is. So he just sits up fully and grabs both of Dave's shoulders and kisses him with everything that's left in him. That should get the message across.


	5. Fever Deep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Penultimate chapter, most likely. Thanks for sticking around while I disappeared.

“Will you just -- will you _move_ already, this is seriously getting old,”

Dave's voice cuts through his thoughts like a knife through jelly, and he tries and turns his head towards it only to realize that the room is going past as he's being hoisted up, two arms under his armpits pushing him up and trying to drag him into a sitting or possibly standing position. He flails around a bit, tries to grip onto something that's solid and nonmoving. Dave grunts and pushes at him until he's halfway vertical and Sollux blinks at the wall, trying to come to grips.

“What'th going on?” he manages, his face flushing hot with blood. Dave pushes again and then gives up and all but lifts him. He used to be able to do that with ease. Now he's struggling with a weight that isn't showing in Sollux's gangly frame yet, the frail bony body a lot heavier than it used to be. He grunts again, some sort of an answer, and props Sollux up against himself.

“We're going to bed is what's going on. Cooperate with me. Help me out here, your ass is uncannily heavy and I can't drag you over on my own.”

Sollux cooperates. His feet are on the floor and moving, shuffling, and he's blushing hot but that's irrelevant, he's confused and hot and the room is spinning. He tries to lift up and hover, too lazy to walk, but trying to use his powers feels like prodding something inflamed and swollen and he gives up with a wince. His head hurts, even as an afterglow of endorphines still courses through his blood, and they're both moving now, in the direction of Dave's room.

“Why're you taking me?” he gets out, and that answer is enough for Dave to parse, who shakes his head and almost chuckles, “You're sleeping with me, dude. Need to keep watch on you incase you randomly explode on me.”

The bed hits him in the back suddenly, and Sollux stretches his arms out over his head, legs hanging over the edge. "'m not going to eckthplode," he slurs out, and alternates between watching Dave and the ceiling. Dave looks concerned, which is rare. He usually waits for everything to blow over when Sollux is on one of his benders, supplies Mountain Dew and snack food and looks appropriately unimpressed at the codes even though he kind of is. But this is different because this is weird and alien, and he doesn't know what's going on, can't fix it. He's so far out of his depth that it's actually kind of funny, in a cruel way.

“I'm _okay_ ,” Sollux slurs, stretches again, and blinks up at Dave when he begins to zip his pants open.

“Yo, clean boxers for you...I said cooperate, dammit, that doesn't mean lie around on your back like a drunkass and stare at me. Up with those hips.”

Sollux tries to give him a that's-what-she-said grin, but his face hurts. His head hurts. Everything hurts and everything's weird, and confusing and too-fast too-slow, and he lifts his hips up and lets Dave pull his pants off, and for that he doesn't blush often it's a sight to see when he does, because his pale skin goes bright red when he does until his eyebrows stand out starkly.

Sollux curses his bad luck that he isn't able to appreciate this sudden stroke of Flustered Dave properly, but shuffles into the triforce boxers with only minor complaints. Dave's hands on his hips aren't glowing like a forge any more but they're still warm with familiarity, not burning on his skin but just there, present and trusted, and he actually does trust him to cover his bony ass with clothes and tuck him into bed against weak automatic protest.

The ceiling is melting and swaying too much for him to consider moving on his own. Dave shoves, he shuffles semi-obediently into place, and then there's a blanket over him that does nothing to go against the changing waves of cold and warm that plague his skin.

He shakes his head and slouches back against the pillow while Dave pulls his shirt over his head and stands there freckled and deceptively skinny, old scars on his chest that no one his age should have to bear.

Sollux has never gotten any scars. His teeth are firmly in place again, the adult set that's slightly too big for his mouth so his incisors chew his bottom lip raw. His eyes are there, too, and he almost never presses his fingers against the lids any more to ensure that empty hollow eyesockets are nothing but a distant memory.

He looks in the mirror sometimes, and sees himself reflected, his entire fucked-up glory, and he still manages to be glad that they cheated the game for a fix. There's some things that stay persistently unfixed anyways, there are fears that they both hardly ever admit to, but now he's as fixed as he never thought he would be.

Cheated Death and came away with all limbs present and intact, with a whole living body to call his own. Even if right now he feels more like he's dying by inches, dying and resurrecting one part of his body at a time, washes of numbness and hyperawareness alternating in him and in parts of him until the shifting sensation almost drives him mad. It feels like changing shape, his body creaking and protesting and bursting at the seams. Bones throbbing and softening and stretching until he feels like he's melting like a wax figure and becomes reluctant, not the first time, to let Dave be subjected to this thoroughly gross chapter of the last stretch of his adoscelence. There are fluids clogging him up from inside, building in preparation, and for the first time in recent memory there is some padding to him. It's absolutely non-human.

Dave is not acting like he minds. He isn't acting like anything much. He's acting neutral, so for all Sollux knows he could be freaking out inside. The blanket does nothing against the chill, but those thoughts do nothing to make him want physical affection. Nevertheless, Dave is already shimmying over, not _close_ but close, flashes him a wry grin that Sollux shares, and for a moment everything makes sense.

“If you kick me again, if your bony alien knee so much as nudges me, I swear I'll kick your ass in my damn sleep. I have no mercy, and I don't need your pointy-ass bones to put a damper on my mood.”

Sollux gives him another weak grin and hopes that his face won't fall off while he does. Brushing that thought aside -- fuck he's paranoid, has he always been so paranoid -- he tucks his head underneath Dave's chin. His legs won't fit on the bed if he does that, but his legs can go fuck themselves in that case. The warmth and solidness nearly shock him a little, even in the way it's so terribly saccharine.

Of course his head starts pounding before he can even properly appreciate it. He makes a dissatisfied noise and Dave vaguely pats his back, says, “Don't have one of your fucked-up nightmares,” and though they're all but glued together now it comes across as so incredibly dispassionate, so impersonal, that it kills the moment dead. He's so cool that he's cold sometimes, and Sollux is frozen or burning, so of course their personal temperatures are going to clash more than once.

They're miles away from each other, universes away, and right now the churning in his gut and the writhing of growth inside his bones only amplify how irrenconceilably different they are. He stays curled up close to Dave anyways, because he's less miserable next to him than away from him, and because he needs the warmth.

They don't fit against each other. Dave is built better than him, but his limbs are long too and he hasn't quite outgrown the slouch, so when they tuck up together like this it's an exercise in not stabbing each other with their elbows and getting none into their own ribs. It's not as easy to do as he remembers, all the times when he was heavy with sex and tiredness.

That's coursing through his veins as well right now, but it's drowned out by the itching that is everywhere, in his bones and in his blood. He only doesn't squirm all over the place because he's too tired, and because Dave clings on like a magnet when he has, in fact, managed to fall asleep.

The tangle of limbs this traps him in would be almost endearing if it wasn't for the persistent fear that some part of him that's even now feeling way too hot or way too cold is just going to fall off or melt or do something else completely disgusting.

Everyone else has been fine, he tells himself. Those that went through the shift on Earth have been fine too, have been miserable for a few days or weeks and then gotten used to this new body. But at that moment something inside him shifts like his skeleton is trying to climb out his throat because it's done with his bullshit.

His chest inflates and he feels burning, greasy and sick inside, throbbing and growing, and the sensation isn't healthy at all. Sollux curses inside and curls closer against the forge glow of Dave's body. He feels hot and cold in sickening intervals, painfully awake when he's moments from dropping off to sleep.

Dave makes a noise in his sleep, some kind of stealth snore that's almost a squeak, and even in his misery Sollux can't help but snort. He tries to somehow dig his elbows and knees into his stomach simultaneously, tries to make his spine stop doing this _thing_ , but nothing's working. Dave squeak-snores again. Sollux's brain has apparentely melted and forgotten that he has ever adjusted to a diurnal schedule.

He tries to fall asleep anyways, three times with an actual effort until he remembers that this usually succeeds in doing the total opposite. If his bones weren't trying to jump out of his throat this would be the moment where he'd get out of bed, watch the Discovery Channel and drink a pint mug of milk.

He wonders if he can persuade Dave to go get some milk, or at least to stop that _ridiculous_ noise he's making. But Dave, “I can kill you in like three seconds” reflexes aside, sleeps like a fucking brick. He clutches at Sollux in a way that would be sickening if it wasn't kind of sweet, and then he makes the noise again, _gnh-gnh-squeak_. It's not even at the usual chainsaw level, but it's even more annoying somehow. Sollux jabs him. Dave continues to sleep like a brick. Sollux kicks him weakly in the shin. No result.

At about the time his feet have fallen asleep from hanging over the edge of the bed, he decides that he really needs some more milk. Getting up at ridiculous AM to raid the fridge is a regular thing for him, but it's never been such a challenge. Removing himself from Dave's magnet cling is the first problem. He just pries him off and nudges him over and he stays there, still out like a light.

Sollux's dizziness has turned itself around to sick, overwhelming awakeness, and he is suddenly viscerally aware that his stomach is an empty space inside of him. He needs to eat something, right now, or he is going to consume himself from the inside out, he's going to – stop worrying about bullshit and get his fucking feet under him.

Yes, accomplished.

  
Briefly he has the thought that if he falls and crashes into the turntables, Dave is going to decapitate him with a sord. He doesn't fall. Once he's in the living room, that means halfway to the kitchen. Absent-mindedly, he tries to float off the ground instead of walking, like he sometimes does when he's too lazy to walk and the cable snare on the floor is too much of a challenge to navigate. He regrets it immediately. The moment he even so much as touches on his powers, his head goes blank.

For a gut-wrenching moment he think's it's going to blast out of his eyes, blast his eyes out, and blow a hole into the side of the building. Instead it fizzes out into a few sickly sparks. Sollux presses his hand underneath his ribcage, into the hollow that probably shouldn't be there on a healthy individual, and gasps.

It startles him into sudden nausea, but the nausea doesn't make the hollow hunger go away. Instead he feels all the more hungry out of nowhere. Somehow he doesn’t trip over the undergrowth of wires on his way to the kitchenette. In theory, he can see everything in the nightlit apartment. But he isn’t looking where he’s going until he stands in front of the fridge.

His stomach is hollow and full of acid at the same time. The hunger is something he hasn't felt for a while, like a surge of panic, quick and cold. It comes from somewhere beyond conditioning and habit, it's nothing like appetite, it's instinct, pure and simple.

He pulls out the big jar of milk, and starts chugging in the hopes that this will stop the acid burn. It does. He empties the entire container, in record time, getting a few spills on his chin. It tastes kind of disgusting but he doesn’t dwell on it. Pretty much everything tastes disgusting right now. That doesn’t cancel out the fact that he's suddenly, terrifyingly hungry.  
He empties the fridge of meat after he’s done with the milk, using his teeth again, carnivore teeth that are wasted on store-bought sausage and mincemeat, all of it way too cold instead of the proper bloody stuff. He doesn’t care. Either this will restore functionality and make him stop feeling like he'll gnaw through a door, or he'll explode.  
After forcing down a good part of the meat, he rips open a few joghurts, eats them with his fingers, scooping the stuff into his mouth until it drips down his chin. It's a stunningly gross combination, but he forces it down.

Through all of it he watches himself, standing over his own shoulder, scarfing down the disgusting mess of food, bare clawed feet curled against the cold tile. The part of him that isn't in a hungry hormonal rage blinks numbly. The inner observer somewhere in the back of his skull notes, "Well, that'th weird and really kind of groth." Sollux doesn't feel like bidding him to shut up. He's too busy swallowing everything that's not nailed down or on fire, without tasting, leaving it sticking to his teeth.

When he feels like he isn’t in danger to eat the furniture any longer, he steps back, wipes his mouth, staring. The kitchen is chaos, wrappers everywhere. He makes a short-lived attempt to clear up the mess, but when he bends down, the floor gets closer, almost smacks him in the face, so he gives up on that.

His head rests close to the open fridge door. Cold air hits him in the face. Sollux closes the door by force of will and failing muscles, and stumbles back into the bedroom.

He almost does crash face-down into the turntables, and when he deflects the wall coming rapidly at his head and crashes into the bed instead, he lands more or less across Dave.

Dave wakes up and is vertical almost immediately, running purely on instinct. He looks down at him in huge-eyed confusion in the dark room, and blinks rapidly.  
"The hell is wrong this time?" he asks, a snarl of annoyance and worry in his voice. He reaches out one hand and tries to feel his forehead.

Sollux attemps to slap it away. Dave doesn't give up until he has one hand pressed firmly to his forehead. His palm is calloused.

"I went for a thnack," Sollux says miserably. He huddles forward, crawls under the blankets again. He isn’t dying with hunger any more but nausea has gripped him now, and his stomach keeps turning over, tremors and waves of cold running through him, the ill-matched food trying to force its way back up. He coughs.

Dave lays down again, shakes his head at him, and tries to shuffle a little closer, but Sollux just curls up, face-down, and hopes that he'll pass out soon. There's a distinct sensation of weight, an arm draped over his back just heavy enough for him to feel it. He tries to lean in, to convey his gratitude, but isn't sure if the motion passes from his thoughts to his heavy limbs. The off-grey of night vision fades into dreamless black.

 

Hours or minutes later Sollux jolts awake, heart in his mouth, bile in his throat, choking on his own breath, limbs prickling and shaking with electricity. He coughs and curses and turns over, and groans when his back protests and his muscles refuse to do their work and he just hangs there, bones loose underneath his skin and skin detached from everything else, thin and burning with friction, and after a few more minutes of silent suffering, he starts heaving.

He swears again, out loud this time, through a constricted throat, and wraps his arms around himself. With the next breath comes another tremor, a shockwave of convulsion that seizes him up and pushes him to the point of nausea before subsiding, and again, and again until he’s half-unconscious. A wave of coughing comes and abates and Dave is upright in the bed, one hand on his shoulder, heavy, way too heavy. Shaking him.

It rocks him, even through the shakes, and he shakes his head in counterpoint until he's really naseous and prostesting in a thin, raspy voice. There are overtones all through it, inhuman harmonics that he can hear as they distort his speech, and Dave stares at him, unguarded eyes very wide and just barely red in the colourlessness. He's staring like he's seen a ghost.

"Fuck, thtop!" Sollux rasps, shaking his head until the room spins, and then it slows to a rough, off-kilter teetering, and he tries to breathe. It comes, in a little whine of breath through his constricted throat, and Dave puts a hand on his shoulder considerably softer and says, "Shit, easy there." very quietly.

Sollux forces a wave of tremors down, and collapses back into the pillow. It feels unfamiliar, like it should be liquid, but his body is inert, refusing to move. Darkness flows and opens on the ceiling, unfamiliar unreal shapes, his eyes following them out of nervous twitches of their own. He turns his head with uncanny quickness, a jolting jerky motion, and takes a deep breath to calm the heaving.

"Thith," he hisses, tongue hitting his teeth even more clumsily than usually, "ith going to get ugly."

He slumps back entirely and feels the migraine hit him like a juggernaut. The muscles in his neck twitch tightly, protesting when the sparks flit through it, electric energy forcing its way through nervous pathways that aren't quite ready for it. Sollux attempts to bite his lip, and misses. This is worse than dying, he thinks, then tries to draw a comparison. Maybe dying was worse. For now he is ready to call the score even. He blinks up at the pale smear that Dave's face is in the gloomy halflight. The expression is a pattern of dark blurs, unreadable.

"I've seen ugly," Dave says, his voice wry and tired and somehow still reassuring. "You ain't got nothing on it. This is...perfectly normal. Perfectly normal for weird alien shit. If your head starts turning around the wrong way, then we've got a problem on our hands."

"Dave," Sollux says, though his voice is closer to a whine, "do me a favor. Shut the fuck up."

"Oh, great." Dave says, and pushes a strand of sweat-damp hair from his forehead, "if you're alive enough to swear at me we've still got hope."

He's talking in his easy, untouched tone, smooth in the face of whatever is trying to cut jags into it, settling back into the pillow like he's expecting this to take a while.

"No." Sollux's voice is hollow, and he pulls the covers over his face with a certain finality. "I'm doomed. That'th my thing, being doomed."

"Yeah. Doomed to have me looking after your ass, that's what you are. Now you shut up, if shutting up is a thing you can do." He drags sleep-sluggish fingers through what shows of Sollux's hair, but his voice, muffled as it is, sounds clear and awake.

Dave can go from sound asleep to upright and battle ready in a matter of moments. Sollux peels the covers back minutely and peeks out. Dim red eyes look back at him. The expression is underscored by a raised eyebrow. The fingers in his hair stroke little circles and he leans his heavy pounding head towards them, trying to forget that he's bursting at the seams.

"Or keep talking," Dave revisits, "that way at least I know you're still alive."

Sollux snorts, rolling over on his side into an undignified huddle so Dave is leaning over him, one hand still very conscientiously petting his hair. "I am okay," he groans, a jolt and twisting in his spine belying his words, "Thith shaking and nauthea shit ith a feature, not a bug. I'm thuppothed to feel awful."  
"Good to hear everything's going according to plan," Dave says, and then, "Dude. This sucks so many balls."

Sollux refuses to dignify this extremely obvious statement with anything but a whine, curling up around one lanky arm wrapped around his stomach. His body seems bent on disintegrating, like he has to hold it together to keep it falling from pieces, and he hasn't got enough hands to stop himself from tearing at the seams.

His bones crack. He can hear the sound, and it sounds like it ought to hurt terribly, but all he feels is a numb hot pressure. His heart races, beating in his mouth. Fingers clench into fists and uncurl again limply and then not even the energy for that is left. He curls up a little tighter, writhing against the force that's climbing up and down his backbone and jarring, tearing at his nerves.

The change happening to his body actually makes a sound, at least to his own ears, a terribly wet noise that he desperately wishes he didn't have to listen to. Fingernails dig into his palms and he swears he can feel bones shift against each other, sinews drawing tight and tighter and everything stretching, everywhere, and he caught in the middle of it with his teeth clenched trying to breathe as if his organs aren't making a spirited attempt at jumping out of his body.

Through all of this, Dave stays propped up next to him, hand in his hair, making vaguely reassuring "There, there," noises. He sounds utterly out of his depth. Sollux figures that he isn't quite at home with the fact that this is supposed to be happening.

The everpresent fingers curl over the convex of one horn, the pressure soothing in his undone state, and he says "I've got this," like he wants to convince himself, and startles when Sollux presses a little closer still. They both stay unbreathing for a long moment, and there's skin on feverish oversensitive skin, and it hits him hard somewhere deep, like a punch.

He turns his head up feeling like his neck is creaking, and manages a tight rictus of a grin. "Thith'll be the worst par— _ack!_ " He recoils, hands snapping up to cup over his eyes, and twists until his head is buried in the mattress. For a jolting terrible moment the sense of his psiioniics overloading beats at the inside of his head, in time with his fast-paced heartbeat, making him sick and nauseous and making his skull split with pain as he tries to force them back without blowing a hole in the bed below him.

"Hey. Hey!" a pair of hands are on his shoulders and he makes an entirely unsettled noise and curls up tighter despite the groaning protest from his overtaxed muscles.

"Ohfuckohgodohshit my head'th gonna eckthplode FUCK!" he screams into the pillow, his eyes feeling hot and foreign in his skull, and the violent beating pulse seems to confirm that, growing and growing until all of his remaining energy is focused on keeping his head from indeed blowing up.

The mental image that cuts through the quick loud panic is enough to make his stomach lurch on its own, but he lets out a rough laugh anyways, ending in a muffled curse when snapping energy wraps around his head despite his best efforts. Somewhere behind and above him, Dave curses, sounding decidedly worried. His hands are clenched in a death grip around Sollux's bony shoulders as if he's worrying he will indeed blow up and is trying to hold him together through sheer force of will. He swears again, fingers digging into the nonexistant meat of his shoulders, right into the too-sensitive skin. Sollux lets out something close to a yowl, teeth gritted, and squirms away.

The room goes past in a flickering half-illuminated blur and then there's a thump and a reeling explosion of pain, and he blinks through the psychic storm to notice he's landed nonexistant-ass-first on the floor.

For a moment, everything is silent but his ragged breath and the roar of unchecked psiioniics tearing loose from his head, sore and painful as the threads of energy surround his head like a corona, leaving behind a somewhat lessened sense of pressure when something dies down and the roaring storm leaves behind a soft tolerable buzz.

Sollux breathes out and locks eyes with Dave. They're both silent, Dave presumably from numb shock and Sollux because his tongue feels dry and plastered to the roof of his mouth. The look manages to carry a message anyways, something wordless, a sense of breathing out together, fists clenched, waiting for whatever happens next. On the occasion that he doesn't hide them, Dave's eyes are wide open windows into him, which may be a reason for hiding them in the first place. They also manage, wide open and questioning, to pick apart whoever is looking into them.

The look is magnetic, and whatever part of Sollux is tucked away from the bubbling twisty mess that is body is set on becoming watches with intent. It provides its own commentary, and he quietly shakes his head, staring, poleaxed and tired and feeling like the threads of his muscles are about to unravel.

Something inside nags at him, an incoming rant, a surge of words that demands to be said, but neither his lungs nor his mind feel up to the task. "Hand up?" he croaks, resigning himself to a few words at a time. Dave gives him another blank stare and then it clicks and he's on his feet, arranging Sollux's sticklike arms over his shoulders. Despite the frailty, he feels like he weighs tons, and it takes a wobbly, concentrated effort from both of them to transport him back to the bed. Once there, he stretches out despite the twinging pains that urge him to curl up until it goes away, breathing in deep to get air into him so that his skinny chest inflates alarmingly.

He feels sticky and soaked with sweat, and slowly his fists unclench, the tensed muscles in his limbs become slack, and he breathes out with a sigh. This final feeling of pressure is the worst part, and it _will_ hurt, and he tries not to think about it. Dave takes one hand of his and he doesn't even think to pull away, because this provides something like a tether to the part of him that's in danger of floating, making sure he doesn't remove himself from whatever is keeping him on the bed.

Sollux squeezes back, or at least tries to, and promptly falls unconscious.

* * *

 

Thinking that he's already as on edge as he's ever going to be was a mistake. His teeth may be grinding together with silent frustration, his eyes narrow, hands shaking almost as much as Sollux's sick-trembling limbs. But when those illuminated eyes sudden flutter closed and he just deflates and it's clear that he's out like a light, Dave gets introduced to a whole new dimension of worry.

His head is booming with quiet for the moment it takes him to notice that Sollux is breathing deep and even, and then his tight clenched hands uncurl and the panic drains out of him in a wave that leaves him exhausted.

He sits there half-leaning over Sollux, crumpled into himself, and shakes his head narrowly with the quiet kind of terrifying thought that somehow, this narrow streak of troll with his neurotic habits and sawblade teeth got a grip on something beneath his ribs, and whenever he shifts or breathes or a flash of discomfort flickers there-and-gone-again over his unconscious face, it feels like he's squeezing that defenseless part of him tight. Like those bony, far too skilled fingers have inched their way unharmed into the clockwork machinery of his feelings, the inner workings that are mysterious even to Dave himself, and quietly rearranged a few gears.   
And now everything moves to a different beat, the tone of the tick has changed, he's an idiot for not noticing it sooner but in this hollow sucking silence it's suddenly startlingly clear that his heart is beating.  
  
It's such a sucker-punch shock it's frustrating, in a good way, and Sollux isn't even conscious.  
There's a flash of a grin on his face for an instant, and then he shakes his head again, looks down at the unconscious bag of bones that dares call himself a troll.  
„The hell am I gonna do about you, answer me that.“  
  
He says it quietly, so Sollux doesn't hear or so he doesn't wake him up, either way. How do you even handle an electrical storm with delusions of inadequacy, stopping your heart like you stop clocks? Dave doesn't know, he's blissfully ignorant, and right now the priority is to get this unfortunate fuck through the night, and then they can address why his crooked fanged smile that happens sometimes causes so much havoc, somewhere behind his ribs.  
  
Sollux makes a sound like he's trying to cough, and it's so wet and thick and choking that fear comes straight back. In a flash of inspiration Dave rolls him onto his side. It's like handling a bundle of sticks with the temperature of a radiator. He looks like he should weight as little as a bird, but somehow he's as heavy as stones, constructed out of iron bars. His skin feels uncomfortable, hot and tight, and Dave can't even imagine how uncomfortable it must be to be inside that skin.  
  
Once he's reasonably sure that Sollux isn't in the process of dying right now, he twists to the side, picks up his phone, and leans back against the headboard to hunch over it.  
Who the hell to bother at this ungodly hour.  
  
Some of the trolls have adapted their circadian rhythms to the overwhelming diurnal-ness of the world they now live in, some of them prefer to have the nights for themselves, some of them, like Sollux, have no discernible pattern to the intervals in which they collapse and get some rest.  
Right at this moment, because of course, because the universe has it out for him, only Karkat is awake. Dave heaves a sigh, shifts another glance at Sollux.

* * *

dude before your fingers even touch the keys i want you to get something  
absorb it

understand it

just this once you will keep your messages brief and your rambling well and truly nil  
because

the honey mustard nerdlord just had a coughing fit of world destroying proportions and then promptly passed the fuck out

how worried should i be  
–  
IF I HAD A DOLLAR (WHICH IS A STUPID UNIT OF CURRENCY BY THE WAY) FOR EVERY TIME YOU ENGAGED IN YET ANOTHER FEAT OF BAFFLING HYPOCRISY, I WOULD BE A LOT RICHER THAN I AM NOW.  
BUT CONSIDER THAT SHIT TABLED FOR THE MOMENT.

FIRST, HE'S NOT DYING. I HOPE HE'S FUCKING FINISHED WITH THAT.   
BUT. THIS IS SOLLUX. BEING IN GROSS DANGEROUS WORRYING SITUATIONS IS KIND OF HIS *THING*.  
UGH. I WISH I DIDN'T HAVE TO SAY THIS, BUT I'M COMING OVER. YOU CAN'T BE TRUSTED TO HANDLE A TROLL DURING A CRITICAL STAGE IN HIS DEVELOPMENT ANYWAYS, YOU'RE TOO MUCH OF A MORON FOR THAT.  
–  
dunno  
i handle him plenty well in critical situations usually  
but no seriously   
karkles i thought youd never ask  
this is me throwing myself at your feet and accepting the help youre so graciously lugging at my head  
–  
THIS IS ME SAVORING THAT MOMENT AND  
OH HELL NO  
LET'S TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY FOR JUST ONCE.  
I'LL BE AS SWIFT AS A DIPSHIT ARROW TO AID YOU IN THIS LATEST CAPTORMERGENCY.  
–  
cool, man

* * *

  
He lets the phone drop out of his hand onto the sheets, huffing out air between his teeth. Sollux lays there like a bag of bones, a mess of bruises and uncomfortable-looking skin. He isn't a great help in this state. Dave finds himself missing the earlier stages of this metamor-fuckit, when he could at least apply blankets, food and moral support with a certain chance that Sollux would feel slightly less shitty.   
He's not good at sitting by and not doing anything, just letting things run their course. Sollux twists and twitches in his unrestful-looking sleep. Yes, he's definitely taller already, longer, his limbs gawky and sticklike. His elbows must be classified weapons.   
  
His knees look pitiful somehow, all knobbly and bruised. Dave snorts out an undignified laugh, kind of fearing for his sanity. When the sight of someone's knees inspires a fit of affection, you were most likely well and truly screwed. He stood to go stand by the window, and turned around in mid-step, remembering that he should probably cover Sollux up. Something about keeping feverish people warm? His knowledge of medicine is mostly pulled from the internet, and it probably doesn't apply to alien growth cycles anyways, but with how skinny Sollux is, it's hard to think that he wouldn't get cold.

With the sheet tucked over him, he doesn't look so dauntingly tall. His hair spills into his face, damp and spiky, and his expression is peevish, even in sleep. Dave goes and stands at the open window, elbows leaned on the sill. In moments like this he kind of wishes he smokes, because that would make inhaling and exhaling streams of air while looking at the sky – lightening now, not blue-black anymore but a greyish bruise colour – that much more meaningful.   
  
That thought makes him look like a melodramatic sap, and if he's entirely honest with himself, the allegation isn't totally untrue. Besides, he needs the lung capacity for fighting, even if he's only doing it to preserve his own skills.  
He sighs, just preparing to hoist himself up so he can get a better look at the late-late night street, when the doorbell shrills. It's a harsh, repetive sound, like someone is leaning on it, and then resolves into rrrring!-rrrring!-rrrring! bursts of noise, presumably a symptom of frustration. Dave jumps, and turns the flinch into a change of direction towards the door immediately, glad for his quick reflexes. Sollux doesn't even stir when he flashsteps to the apartment door and buzzes Karkat in.

Once he reaches their floor, Karkat gives him a look that's offense with worry between the lines and shoulders his way inside. He's like a short, pudgy tank that fires concern and his own aggressive brand of mothering (or is that lususing?) and despite himself, Dave is amused and also kind of impressed.

Karkat's bedside manner consists of standing there with his hands shoved in his pockets, bending down to look at Sollux with his lips pulled from his teeth in a frown. He extracts one hand to poke at Sollux's shoulder rather unprofessionally, and watches the flicker of his eyelids for a while.

“He's deep under,” is his verdict when he sits at the edge of the bed. He doesn't look too worried, which Dave takes for a good sign. “His body is kind of...concentrating on making it the final stretch of the way, so the rest has just shut down. The best we can do is leave him the hell alone. And check regularily, of course.”

That sounds straightforward. But Dave is pretty sure that there won't be any going to sleep for the two of them, so he takes up the task of making coffee. Karkat sits at the table, nervously drumming his short claws on it. He accepts the Bambi mug with relatively good grace, and downs it like a health potion.

“Everyone I'm friends with makes me worry about them for completely stupid reasons,” he suddenly snaps. Dave raises his eyebrows, and refills Karkat's coffee, feeling vaguely like a bartender become therapist.

“I mean, if I wasn't surrounded by morons who get into some disgusting form of trouble all the time, and people who are well known for dropping the fuck dead and giving me the shock of my life randomly, repeatedly, I wouldn't have to worry so much.”

“Dead friends are the worst shit the universe can throw at you. I sympathize.” Dave finds himself agreeing, sitting down with a matching mug of coffee, surprised that Karkat is honest for once instead of skin-crawlingly irritating. The bags under his eyes make him look transparent, and his shoulders are hunched for a minimum distance between his face and the coffee. It looks like he's inhaling it.

“But this, this is run-of-the-mill weird alien puberty. No horrors from outer space, just some unfortunately gross body stuff. Like you said, we just wait for Captor to turn into a beautiful butterfly. Don't panic.”

Karkat, or at least the part of his face visible between coffee mug and untameable hair, manages to look grateful. Dave, who was on some level prepared for another shotgun talk, is oddly relieved at the armistice. “Tell you what? Let's watch a movie, turn this into a regular little sleepover. I've got enough caffeine to dethrone a minor god of dreams, I've got a blockbuster collection, and I've got candy. We'll survive the night on rations like that.”

“There's actually something between your ears resembling a brain, and just now it gave off a noticable signal,” Karkat says. It's his way of paying a compliment. 

They relocate to the couch and end up watching Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and it isn't even that bad.

The sky outside turns lighter and lighter,gradually,  and they both develop headaches and stomachaches from too much coffee, and periodically they check on Sollux, who sleeps like a rock and faintly glows. It's eerie to see the shine of his eyes through his thin eyelids. The whole of him is a paradox, curled up asleep with a fang peeking past his lips. He's strong enough to level buildings and looks like he was made of lashed-together twigs. He looks thin-skinned and narrow and breakable, but he's wiry and endurant and too damn stubborn by half.

And, when the sun has broken over the edge of the horizon in a yellow-grey dawn, he's asleep deeply, but not like before, not in that feverish way. The tension has gone out of him, nothing is glowing any more, his chest is rising and falling slowly under the covers. And that drawn, peevish expression is gone from his face.

Karkat looks at him for a long time, channeling his inner team medic, and finally pronounces the whole thing Over, and Dave sags with relief. It was starting to get him down, all this pain and humilation and discomfort that Sollux had to endure, the worry on his side. The return to relative normalcy is welcome.

“He'll likely be out of it for a while,” he notes. “He looks wiped. I know I'd be. Let's give him some more beauty sleep, what do you say?”

Karkat nods. He's a sleep deprivation veteran, and at this point the state of being extremely tired has turned into giddiness, a momentary reprieve from fatigue. Dave can feel it too, a lingering tingle in his fingertips, his skin feeling tight. He's lightheaded, he's relieved that Sollux went through the valley of troll puberty with no casualities, and he's even a little bit glad to have Karkat there for moral support.

Falling asleep now, with their faces on the table, would be unacceptable. They think of strifing, first, but in their current state there would probably be a loss of limb, so that's a no. Trying to watch movies leads to both of them staring at the screen like it will offer spiritual wisdom. They abandon that idea, but leave the TV on just to provide some background noise.   
  
In a stroke of genius, Dave digs out a battered deck of cards, and attempts to teach Karkat how to play Texas Hold 'Em. Karkat loses five times in a row, and every time he looks like he'd throw the cards if he had the energy or motivation.   
  
The clock crawls towards noon. Another spell of giddy exhaustion has hit them, and Dave is flashstep-pacing the room, phasing from the door to the wall and back again. Karkat just sits there and jitters. Finally he slaps the table with his palm, but weakly. His expression broadcasts “sudden great idea” in high-definition, and Dave is understandably worried.

“We should make food. For us, but mostly for Sollux, whenever he decides to return to consciousness.”

It sounds like a solid plan. Dave goes to the kitchenette, hip-checks the counter on accident, and swears. Karkat looks ponderously at the fridge. The fridge looks like someone turned it upside down. The kitchen looks like a hurricane went through it. It's an atrocious mess.  
  
“I think he raided it last night. Can't say I blame him. Now we have been given a quest to make something edible out of whatever he didn't manage to devour.”

Karkat nods, and is already going for a bowl, apparentely only with a fuzzy idea of what he's going to prepare in it. “Calories. That's the thing. After a shift like this, he needs a metric fuckton of calories. Now I know you humans treat that word like it means "evil, life-destroying poison" for some reason, but we as an actual evolved species know that calories mean fuel, and fuel is important.”

He crosses his arms and looks at Dave as if daring him to disagree.

“Jeez, Vantas. I'm not Cosmopolitan, you don't have to tell me that energy is necessary to live. I agree though. Energy, he looks like he could use. So what'll it be?”

“Pankcakes,” Karkat says, and starts looking for a whisk, “No, bacon. No, bacon pancakes. With cheese. And fries. And if you don't want him to get scurvy, you should get some vitamins into him at some point.”

Dave discovers some bacon left untouched by the nightly fridge rampage, and turns in over to Karkat. Whatever they construct is going to be an object of evil glory, he's sure. It's also likely to be delicious. That, or a murderous disaster of epic proportions.

“Why am I responsible for him getting an adequate amounts of nutrients? Do I have to feed him personally, or what? With a spoon? And a napkin?"

“Please, this is Sollux. I've known him for considerably longer than you have, but you should also know that sometimes he just...forgets things. He doesn't mean to, it just doesn't occur to him that he needs to input fuel to keep going. I think it's in your best interest that he doesn't starve.”

Dave chuckles, and watches with a loopy, tired-out attentiveness as Karkat whisks their creation into submission. In his best interest, indeed. “You have no idea, man.”

Karkat surprises him. He doesn't even look up from his work, but he says “Yes, I think I do,” and that is that.

The resulting product looks like it had pancakes somewhere in its distant ancestry, but that's all that can be said for it. It's a mountain of light brown with other colours mixed in worryingly, and is a distressing degree of lumpy. It smells, however, delicious.

When he goes to check on Sollux this time, heavy with how tired he is, he's met with a pair of dim red and blue eyes. Sollux looks at him for a long moment before he smiles, tired and burnt-out but so wide that all his teeth show. Then he grimaces.

“Hey there, Captor. Looking good,” Dave says. Sollux looks, in fact, like he's been through a wrangler and then a lawnmower, but his essential features are the same, and they're still pretty damn appealing, so it's not much of a lie. He's also kicked off most of the blankets, and the result effect is somewhat shocking. Jesus, he's tall. His shoulders have a little bit of broadness now that looks like it could turn into actual muscle if he put his mind to it, and his limbs are preternaturally long. There's a lot to look at, from his messy bed-head down over a torso that's mostly ribs, over hipbones that are mostly knives. His legs look like they're not going to end. Even his feet are long and narrow, and they hang over the edge of the bed.

“Don't even charm, Thtrider.” His lisp is as bad as ever, maybe even worse, and it's likely that his teeth have grown as well. “I know I look like shit.”

Dave shakes his head, and feels a smile creep onto his face that's decidedly loopy and that has nothing at all to do with sleep deprivation. “Nah. You look like an attractive specimen of troll who's had a rough couple of days.”

He pauses, then shakes his head. “We are so going to need a bigger bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> The stuff Sollux "grudgingly" watches is mostly spy-fi and screwball comedies. He asks endless questions about politics and culture until Dave wants to tear out his hair, his own hair, and possibily rip the wallpaper off the walls. The lovely illustration is by Syb, the OP of the prompt --> syblatortue.tumblr.com .


End file.
